Sunday, October 30, 2011

Stronghold 3 Review

Stronghold 3, developed by Firefly Studios and published by 7Sixty.
The Good: Multifaceted economy and production, robust castle construction, two campaigns, multiplayer, map editor, online leaderboards, you can make candles!
The Not So Good: Very few innovations, atrociously challenging and no difficulty settings, excruciating slow pace, imprecise mouse input, repetitive mission objectives, occasional bugs, light on content
What say you? Little more than a visual update of the classic series with many new issues: 4/8

This review also appears at

UPDATE, 11/23/11: Patches have fixed the mouse input issue, added difficulty settings, and allowed the user to adjust the game speed. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

While most strategy games has you go on the offensive, sometimes it’s fun to play the defender, carefully preparing your protection to fend off the unwelcome visitors. The ever-growing tower defense game cashes in on this concept, but I would argue that its origin was seen in the original Stronghold, an entertaining combination of harvesting resources, building castles, and dumping hot oil on unsuspecting enemies (I still remember the game addressing you by name, and reminding you when it was getting late). This solid first outing was followed by a series of increasingly disappointing sequels, but the “reset” button has been pressed in the newest iteration: Stronghold 3. Hoping to add more polished gameplay with updated graphics, does Stronghold 3 revive a series on the defensive?

Stronghold 3 transitions to 3-D with mixed results. The highlight of the graphics is the physics-driven destruction: castle walls plausibly fall towards the ground, which is much more effective than scripted degradation. This goes a long way to making some impressive combat where chaos reigns supreme. The buildings aren't the best thanks to some bland, low-resolution textures, and the terrain features too much green terrain and not enough detail. Animations are obviously repetitive but effective enough, while the units themselves are small but distinctive. Stronghold 3 features pop-in (namely grass and shadows) when zooming in, even when set to “ultra,” and objects clipping through each other (namely massed military units) is much too common. The interface hasn't changed much in ten years (in fact, the build menu is identical): while I like the concrete breakdown of your approval rating, the minimap is terribly uninformative. In addition, the using the mouse for orders is inconsistent: sometimes you need to point below a unit, sometimes above, and sometimes directly on them in order to attack, which allows units to completely ignore nearby enemies simply because you can’t figure out where to point (this adds significantly to the game difficulty). Stronghold 3 also suffers from the occasional crash to the desktop and oddity, like the inability to change the screen resolution from the main menu (it must be done while playing a mission). The sound design is nothing spectacular: appropriate battle sound effects with over-the-top and repetitive voice acting when units are selected. The music is appropriate and entertaining, however. While some aspects of Stronghold 3's graphics shine, most is a assortment of highs and lows.

Like previous titles in the series, Stronghold 3 features both military and economic campaigns to fulfill both sides of the castle management equation. In the eight economic scenarios, you must collect a specific number of goods within a time limit. In the seventeen military missions, you must take over enemy castles (or defend your own) within a time limit (usually). The variety leaves a lot to be desired, and the story isn't interesting enough to pay attention to. You are supplied some optional hints before you begin, which are recommended because the scenarios are outrageously difficult, typically involving extremely high resource requirements, brief time limits, and magically spawning AI at the most inopportune times. Of course, you are not offered any difficulty settings to tailor the game towards your experience level. Hey developer: who are you to say how good I will be at your game? Does everyone have the same level of skill? I would think not. And the developers seem to have completely missed the mark for me, as I was unable to beat any of the scenarios except for the first one (luckily, I edited the profile XML file so that I could play all of the missions without having to beat the previous one). In addition, Stronghold 3 does not feature time acceleration; not only does resource collection take a really long time (thanks to multi-step processes that are each executed at a snail’s pace), but you could be wasting your time since you might not pass the scenario anyway. Stronghold 3 does feature a neat online leaderboard, complete with a map displaying where each score originated around the globe, for the lucky few that have experienced success.

Beyond the twenty-five campaign scenarios lie (only) two free build maps with no objectives, (only) five historic sieges where you can attack or defend, and the ability to create your own custom maps using the editor (buried in the Steam install directory) and then play them. Stronghold 3 also comes with multiplayer for four player deathmatch; a patch expected soon will add additional game modes (king of the hill and capture the flag) and more maps (beyond the four current offerings) for up to eight players. Finally, Stronghold 3 has a decent tutorial to teach the basics of the game to newcomers.

The key to success in Stronghold 3 is to have a thriving economy. It takes lots of work to make an imposing castle! Raw materials (wood, stone, iron, and oil) must be gathered (very slowly) by peasant workers and carried back to your stockpile. Additionally, everyone must be fed, so apples, cheese, meat, and bread must be grown and processed (wheat makes flour makes bread) at different buildings. It can be difficult to determine exactly how much food is being produced and consumed, as the numbers change in real-time as items are produced; there is no access to long-term average to figure out whether you can increase the rations. Any resource deficiency can be traded for using the market (at a huge expense, though), and estates that (rarely) dot the landscape can be captured for supplemental goods. Peasants must be housed, and the game determines which house you want to construct based on (I think) the distance from the keep. Peasants cannot be reassigned in their jobs, so if you need more stone than wood, you have to completely shut down the woodcutter and hope the peasants choose the quarry instead. Upgrades are earned by having banquets, and those require even more specialized goods like venison, vegetables, honey, wine, and clothes. Tax income in the form of gold is used to purchase troops (you must also produce each weapon at a specific building from the raw goods).

In order for people to move in to your quaint castle in the woods, you should make a happy little village by supplying food, beer, and church (the three pillars of medieval society). Churches now require candles (produced by a chandler), so that’s something new to worry about. Of course, you can choose to be a total jerk and adorn your castle with torture devices and severed heads. Why? Even though the cheerfulness will obviously suffer, your minions will work harder. If you can afford the happiness hit (by lowering taxes or providing more food), you can get those peasants to produce faster. Occasional events (rain, sun, wolves, bears) can also have a daily impact on the happiness of your settlement; these are nice touches that make you scramble just when your economy is balanced. It is difficult to keep things flowing smoothly, as it’s very easy to “crash” your economy by not producing enough of something, causing people to leave, preventing you from producing that particular good even more. If all this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it was all in Stronghold 1, outside of the candles, vegetables, and estates. I wish Stronghold 3 brought more innovation than that to the table.

Stronghold 3 gives you all the tools needed to construct your temple of solitude while storming others. Walls, gates, towers, bastions, traps, moats, ditch, oil, logs, and flaming arrows are all there, and you are given a good amount of freedom in constructing your castle, and connecting walls, gates, and towers is straightforward. Military units are created by manufacturing the weapons and then outfitting spare peasants with those tools of death. Typical medieval choices are present: bows, crossbows, spears, pikes, maces, swords, and armor. Units are controlled using typical RTS-style commands: group selection, stances (aggressive, defensive, and stand ground), and movement orders (attack, move, dig moats, use ladders, and, of course, launch cows). Formations are poorly implemented: square and line groups will not move at the same speed, negating the point of placing units in formation in the first place. Your AI opponents are good enough, attacking vulnerable portions of a castle and then using appropriate units most (but not all) of the time. You’ll mostly be battling the clock and resource requirements, though.

Unfortunately, Stronghold 3 doesn’t add anything significant to the series. Candles are required for churches, honor is needed for upgrades, and estates can be captured (when they are rarely placed) around the map to secure some additional resources, but the remainder of the game is virtually identical to previous efforts. While this will appease fans of the series, you would also like to see something dramatic and pioneering in a sequel beyond a simple graphical upgrade. Stronghold 3 centers on collecting raw materials so you can make food, buildings, defenses, and weapons to repel enemy attacks while keeping your population happy. The relationships consist of several steps (like wheat to flour to bread) produced in different buildings, but they are easy enough to grasp. A variety of defensive structures and military units are available, and the open-ended nature of castle design is appreciated. The direct relationship between your economy and military makes providing a solid fiscal footing important, which is generally impossible given the high, unwavering difficulty of the game coupled with the ease at which you can completely destroy your economy. The multiple campaigns highlight either the production or combative portions of the game, and the objectives are repetitive and, frankly, insane. You can't adjust the difficulty to your liking, and thus you must obey the stringent, unrealistic requirements bestowed upon you by the developers. If you are not completely efficient, you'll have to retry missions time and time again. The ancillary features are brief: two free-build maps, five historic sieges, and multiplayer that may feature non-deathmatch modes in the future. The game is also rife with curiosities such as infrequent crashes and imprecise mouse-driven attack orders that really compound the difficulty. Personally, I'd just rather spend $6 on Stronghold than pay eight times that for disturbingly similar content and difficulty issues.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Air Conflicts - Secret Wars Review

Air Conflicts - Secret Wars, developed by 3DIVISION and Games Farm and published by bitComposer Games and Kalypso Media.
The Good: Accessible controls, robust multiplayer modes
The Not So Good: Brief missions with repetitive mission objectives, subpar AI, lacks realistic simulation options, no dynamic campaign
What say you? This thoroughly arcade flight simulation has a disappointing campaign but decent multiplayer: 5/8

This review also appears at

Once a hallmark of PC development, the flight simulation has seen better days. Since Microsoft shut down their development house, few notable titles have been released, and those that have (such as Cliffs of Dover) have failed to live up to expectations. Enter Air Conflicts - Secret Wars from developers 3DIVISION and Games Farm, the former being the author of arcade flight simulation Attack on Pearl Harbor (a game that, not surprisingly, Air Conflicts - Secret Wars has a lot of similarities to). The game is primarily set during World War II, but introduces some planes from The Great War, jet aircraft, and rockets, so that you know for sure it’s not trying to be totally authentic. Will Air Conflicts - Secret Wars soar like the majestic eagle, or stay grounded like the stinky ostrich?

The graphics of Air Conflicts - Secret Wars are mixed. This game will inevitable gain comparisons to IL-2 Sturmovik, a game that’s (can you believe it?) ten years old. Sadly, Air Conflicts - Secret Wars pales in comparison to that historic, ancient title on the graphics front. The plane models are detailed and authentic, as expected in any flight simulation, though damage is less precise: smoke and little bits flying off the body when shot, but nothing too meticulous. Machine gun fire have pleasing tracers that fill the sky, though the explosions are only passable. The biggest area that needs improvement is the terrain: bland desert, forest, and snowy environments have poor textures with cookie-cutter urban environments dotting the landscape. Weather effects are underwhelming, and flying into the sun causes a really annoying red tint to fill the screen. On the sound front, the weapon effects are appropriate and dramatic music fills the air as you aim your sights at the enemy. Air Conflicts - Secret Wars lacks radio chatter and the voice acting is forced. Overall, the presentation of Air Conflicts - Secret Wars is below the $30 asking price.

You are a mercenary pilot, daughter of a famous flying ace, soaring through World War II for fun and/or profit. Flashbacks to your father’s Word War I escapades makes things slightly more varied as you traverse through the game’s seven locations, each containing seven missions each. This might sound like a lengthy campaign, but each mission typically takes less than ten minutes to complete and your objectives are repeated over and over again: fly here, kill these units, find this place, escort him for a while. Some of the missions in the campaign are stealth-based, where you must avoid white circles indicated on your radar display; these are more annoying than challenging. I quickly lost interest in finding out where the campaign went next. The missions are very easy on any difficulty setting, even when you are commonly outnumbered. In addition, you unlock the next mission in a set order: Air Conflicts - Secret Wars lacks a dynamic campaign that would make it feel like you were contributing to a larger conflict. You cannot save your progress mid-mission (although there are occasional checkpoints if you die), but since the missions are never very long, it’s not really that big of an issue. If you encounter an especially annoying mission, you can skip two scenarios during the campaign.

In addition to the repetitive campaign, Air Conflicts - Secret Wars features a skirmish dogfighting mode where you can take on the enemy AI by yourself, attaining a specific number of kills or surviving for a period of time. Far more interesting is multiplayer, which is the most complete feature of Air Conflicts - Secret Wars. There are four games modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and a mode where you try to destroy ten enemy tanks while protecting your own) in twenty-four locations, all of which are fairly entertaining. The game host can set a time limit, types of permitted aircraft, and weather conditions. You can only have up to eight pilots at a time, which is probably why I found multiplayer to be almost entirely lag-free, if you can connect to the player-hosted servers. You can also join a game in progress, a welcome feature that means less waiting for online flight combat. However, the pervasive high plane health that plagues the campaign also impacts multiplayer: getting one or two kills in a five-minute session is usually the best score.

Several control methods are available for piloting your winged craft of doom. I prefer using the mouse for more precise aiming, but you can also use the keyboard (yuck), a gamepad, or a joystick. Controls are what you would expect for an arcade flight simulator: a non-complicated method with no dials to fiddle with, just movement and speed options. Your weapons include traditional machine guns and bombs with more exotic rockets (an important part of World War II?). The machine guns do overheat, but do so slowly: unless you continually hold down the “fire” button for thirty seconds, you’ll never have to worry about it. You are also given adrenaline, which slows down time so that you can aim more carefully, and a radio-based location thing that pulses faster when you get closer to an objective. The heads-up display (which you can disable) gives you a lead indicator for enemy planes to make engaging the opposition easier, and lower difficulty levels actually include automatic aiming: get anywhere near the lead indicator with your reticule and your guns snap to the correct position. Air Conflicts - Secret Wars is clearly aimed at a novice crowd, at least until you amp up the difficult and disable the visual help.

Air Conflicts - Secret Wars features sixteen planes from World War I, World War II, and beyond. The fighters, bombers, fighter-bombers, and jets are differentiated according to firepower, speed, agility, and endurance (health, I think). The arcade flight model makes any of the planes very easy to fly: while you can see differences in turning radius and speed, I never found any a challenge to operate, and it’s impossible to stall unless you decrease the throttle significantly or fly straight up in the air. There is a small amount of red-out when pulling G’s, but nothing to significantly obscure your view. While Air Conflicts - Secret Wars does offer a “simulation” mode, I’d be hard-pressed to say what, exactly, it does, other than making you stall more. In either case, your plane takes an incredible amount of damage, even on the toughest setting. This might be a good thing, however, as the enemy anti-air guns are insanely accurate. The AI is poor on any difficulty setting: while they will engage you on occasion, they fly slowly and rarely perform evasive maneuvers as you fill them with led. The allied units aren’t any better and provide little assistance; for example, escorted units simply fly in circles (instead of fleeing towards base, as the objectives clearly state), waiting for you to destroy all of the enemy aircraft yourself.

Air Conflicts - Secret Wars is an average arcade combat flight title, and that's all it is. Those whom crave more accuracy in their flight sims will be very disappointed that no options exist to tailor to their specific desires. I would rather have the game appeal to both crowds by offering accessible controls, or more realistic handling if desired. There is a “simulation” control option, but the only thing I think it does is make you stall more. As it stands, you get planes that can withstand a tremendous amount of damage, simplified flight physics, and unintelligent AI opponents that love to fly slowly so you can destroy them easily. This is independent of the difficulty setting: even on ace, the game never makes things even close to being challenging. Artistic freedom is also employed in the weapons: World War II planes are outfitted with rockets and jet engines, plus adrenaline that slows time down so you can pinpoint your attacks. Despite consisting of almost 50 missions, the campaign features short, repetitive missions that get tiresome very quickly. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the comprehensive multiplayer features: there are multiple game modes on twenty-four maps, and you can join a match in progress at any time. While Air Conflicts - Secret Wars will definitely not appeal to the simulation crowd, the relaxed aeronautics finds a niche in the arcade realm of flight simulations if you love online action.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Orcs Must Die! Review

Orcs Must Die!, developed and published by Robot Entertainment.

This review also appears at








Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Off-Road Drive Review

Off-Road Drive, developed by 1C-Avalon and published by 1C Company.
The Good: Unique realistic take on off-road navigation, tough tracks with frequent obstacles, numerous locations and cars with minor tuning options
The Not So Good: Complex control scheme, tutorial gives incorrect instructions, no difficulty settings, iffy multiplayer hosting
What say you? This challenging and authentic off-road racing game offers realistic, measured driving: 6/8

In addition to popular track-based racing like F1, a whole different world of off-road adventures exist, highlighted in games like the DiRT series. However, even then the races take place on roads and never really venture “off road.” To rectify this injustice, Off-Road Drive features off-road driving. Weird, I know! But now, it’s deep water, loose mud, and gigantic rocks, substances that were never really meant to be driven over. So it’s just you, your trusty 4x4, and the clock in a race to scale the highest mountain, wettest sand, and that spectator that’s looking at you funny.

The graphics of Off-Road Drive are pretty good. First, the various tracks look like real-world environments, complete with plenty of detail: trees, rocks, hills, and high-resolution ground textures. There are some nice effects as well: mud gets squashed down by your tires (which changes the properties of the track) and thrown up on the screen, covering your vehicle in the process. Each of the cars are nicely detailed as well, with accurate (for fake cars) exteriors and interiors and animated drivers trying their best to navigate through the hazardous landscape. I will say that the default camera angle, because of the rough terrain, made me a little motion sick with how much it was bouncing around. The crowd that is standing dangerously close to an out-of-control motor vehicle cheers you on as you run head-on into another rock, completing the satisfying racing environment. The sound effects are decent, dominated by the generic and borderline-annoying music. Also included are seemingly accurate engine effects, environmental sounds, and some voiced instructions for the tutorial. Based on the strength of the graphics design, Off-Road Drive holds up to its $35 price tag with the presentation.

Off-Road Drive has you traversing the world’s most rocks/wet/hilly terrain in search for the fastest time to the finish. The career mode is quite extensive: six locations contain three or four championships of three races each, so you can spend a considerable amount of time checking off all the events. There are three types of races: timed sprints, points-based trophy runs, and sectional trials. In addition to the career mode, multiplayer is also present in Off-Road Drive, offering ten or so maps for each race type. You can adjust the number of laps, types of cars allowed, collisions, and number of players (up to four). I should report that I was not able to host any games, getting instantly kicked back to the main menu. As you will see, Off-Road Drive is a complex game, so there is a tutorial to teach you the basics. Unfortunately, the tutorial routinely says the wrong controls (like “LT” is accelerate, even when it’s “RT”), even on default settings. The on-screen prompts during the races are more helpful, but it’s difficult to recover when you start out on the wrong foot.

Off-Road Drive is far, far more than turn, accelerate, and brake. In fact, I’d wager to say Off-Road Drive is the most complex racing game I've ever encountered, playing more like a flight simulation than a traditional car-based title. In fact, Off-Road Drive is so complex that the game runs out of buttons on a gamepad, requiring the use of a modifier button to access some features. While you are carefully driving through the game, you’ll use more traditional options like four-wheel drive, lower gears, and the hand brake. However, you can also lock the wheel and axle differential, bleed or inflate the tire, and use the winch by selecting a tree and adjusting the power to prevent the tension from snapping the wire. One thing you should not use is automatic transmission: it does a terrible job shifting at the right times and using the correct gears. Figuring out when to use these tools is part of the challenge, made a little easier by on-screen suggestions at specific points in the race.

Off-Road Drive has twenty cars that unlock as you complete events, including sport utility vehicles, trucks, and buggies. They are distinguished according to torque, acceleration, handling, and off-road capability. You are given more tuning options to further tweak their attributes as well: different visual skins, suspensions to balance handling and off-road, and tires for hard, loose, or muddy terrain. The tracks throw all sorts of crazy challenges at you, from loose mud to deep water to sand to hills to rocks you are supposed to drive over. I assure you that you’ll get stuck. A lot. Heck, I got stuck in the tutorial. Since the races are timed events, you want to finish quickly, but not too quickly that you can’t drive over the barriers in your way. You must also stay on the racing line: there are time penalties, ironically, for going off the road. The AI is pretty slow (it's extrapolated from a single ghost car) and doesn’t mount a huge challenge unless you get stuck a lot; the lack of difficulty settings makes the track the only real obstacle.

If you’re looking for an authentic off-roading experience, look no further than Off-Road Drive. The advanced driving starts with the controls: you’ll need to handle four-wheel drive, wheel and axle differential, low gears, inflating tires, and when all else fails, the trusty winch. This is not a simple point-A-to-point-B racing game, that’s for sure: the challenging tracks feature a variety of tough conditions that you must navigate, introducing a strong element of strategy into your driving. The AI is pretty weak (the challenge comes from the tracks themselves), and since the game lacks difficulty settings, unless you get yourself stuck and rely on the winch too much, victory (or at least a good finish) is assured. The lengthy career mode takes place across the globe and features three different race types against the clock and AI ghost car. Twenty cars are gradually unlocked, offering different handling characteristics and minor tuning options. Multiplayer is also present, although I was never able to host a match. Learning the multifaceted control scheme is tough enough, but the tutorial constantly references the wrong commands (even on default settings), potentially confusing new drivers. Finally, the graphics are nice and put you in the mood for some off-road excitement. I think $35 is a bit steep for people who are only marginally interested in the game, but those looking for a different take on driving will find an appealing product.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Dawn of Fantasy Review

Dawn of Fantasy, developed by Reverie World Studios and published by 505 Games.
The Good: Three game modes, can attack others online, large battles, competent AI, editor
The Not So Good: Unnecessarily drawn-out building and resource collection, shallow city management and diplomacy, generic fantasy units, bland quests, underdeveloped online features, terrible lack of thorough in-game documentation, bugs
What say you? An arduous pace and a lack of innovative strategy and city management makes this MMO one to forget: 3/8

This review also appears at

When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love with steer the stars. This is the Dawn of...Fantasy? Yes, as I await a lawsuit by the RIAA for unauthorized use of song lyrics, it's time to delve into a new real time strategy game set in a fantasy kingdom, complete with humans, ugly green humans, and pointy-eared humans with long, flowing hair. But what's this, Dawn of Fantasy has added the ever-expanding “MMO” tag to my RTS? Indeed, as you expand your kingdom online, you can engage other human-type folk in epic battles of epic epicness. Epic! Does this permutation of strategy gaming serve notice as an original product?

The 3-D graphics of Dawn of Fantasy are decidedly mixed. The environments look great, with plenty of detail in the trees, grass, water, fog, snow, rocks, and forts that adorn the countryside. The units are worse off, with a mix of detailed models (notably horses) and blocks ones (the people riding the horses) with rough animations. Battles are large and can be impressive in their scale, with plenty of bloodshed to go around. The game doesn't zoom out far enough, however, so it can be hard to manage your troops. In addition, game performance is very inconsistent: it's usually smooth, but hiccups are common and definitely noticeable. The woes don't stop there: there is significant clipping between units (with your military moving right through each other), looping sound when loading a level, and various bugs, from randomly not saving quest progress to disappearing orders to your view not moving to where you clicked on the minimap. It all adds up to a unpolished experience that needs additional massaging in the future. The sound design is average: I found the voice acting to be better than I had expected, battle sounds to be repetitive, and music to be generically fitting to the fantasy setting. While Dawn of Fantasy does hit some high points in terms of graphical design, overall it falls short of true notoriety.

Dawn of Fantasy is a real-time strategy game taken online for massively multiplayer online enjoyment, featuring the ever-enduring struggle between Humans, Orcs, and Elves, three races that have never been featured in any fantasy game. Being an online game, you first have to initialize your client and check a list of files for integrity, a long process when patches must be downloaded. The main portion of the game takes place in the online kingdom, where you found a city and build new structures, hire troops, go on quests, and engage both human and AI enemy armies and towns. The first step is to pick two town traits, specializations that will accentuate the production of resources or troops in your village. Despite being online, a majority of the online kingdom is played solo: none of the quests can be completed cooperatively. While you can attack other players’ towns and troops, you can’t take control of their villages even if you successfully siege them, only receiving a token bonus of resources for all of your hard work. Thus, the persistent online world of Dawn of Fantasy remains static as nothing changes hands. The quests are repetitive attack or build tasks; just accept everything and you’ll slowly build up your town using the rewards for completing each quest.

There are two other game modes in Dawn of Fantasy. The first is kingdom wars, played offline against the AI, where you start with a city or two (depending on the size of the map you have selected) and must recruit troops, move armies, and take over hostile cities. In each city, you can tweak the production of the game’s resources, trade items, and heal or upgrade troops. Once you have a large enough army, you can march out into the wilderness and attack enemy towns, setting up camp outside the city limits to build siege weapons or recruit mercenaries. For neutral villages, shallow diplomatic options are available: monetary gifts, trade agreements, and alliances. The only real strategic decisions in this mode are how many troops to bring and where to bring them. The third game option is a skirmish mode that has you attack or defend a castle, given a set of troops you can partially choose before the assault begins. These encounters become repetitive after your first battle, since most castle sieges work the same way.

Dawn of Fantasy makes it exceedingly difficult to learn how to play. There is no manual and no tutorial, and the vague in-game documentation doesn't address half of the game mechanics. Despite the relatively straightforward nature of the game, I still expect a full explanation of how things work. The game does, however, include a scenario editor with scripting abilities so you can create your own maps and missions.

There are four main resources in Dawn of Fantasy: food, wood, gold, and stone. These are gathered by sending peasants to specific points on the map, and they will (very slowly) gather them up. Resource collection can be influenced by the weather: for example, crops aren’t gathered during the winter, so you must rely on hunting animals instead. While this might have been interesting in theory, in practice it just means more micromanagement. The buildings are generic and lack innovation: resource structures, unit producers, trade posts, and research facilities that are found in pretty much every strategy game. There are only superficial decisions to make regarding which building or upgrade to invest in next. The biggest problem with Dawn of Fantasy is time: it takes entirely too long to gather resources and build things. What is too long, you say? I’m gathering gold at the rate of 0.6 per minute, and it costs 412 gold to build a barracks. So, it will take around ten real hours to afford to build it, and then another eight real hours to actually construct it. That’s how long I’m waiting to get troops (not to mention the additional resource cost and build time for each squad of units). Who is going to tolerate that? Not me: I actually would like to play, instead of waiting almost an entire day for no reason. Does waiting make the game more strategic? No. Does waiting make the game more fun? No. Does waiting make the game more immersive? No. What it does is make me hit the “exit game” button more quickly, and play something else (or go on a vacation) while I wait for my workers to collect gold and build things. I doubt a lot of people will choose to go back. Dawn of Fantasy practically begs you to log in for a couple of minutes, queue up a building, go on one quest, and then leave for the rest of the day. You really need to have more than one kingdom running at a time to cut down on the boredom. There’s been many times I simply can’t do anything because I have to wait hours for resources and/or buildings that I need to make the armies to finish the quests. There’s a reason that we’ve never seen a strategy game where it takes half a week of real time to build a military unit.

Speaking of military units, Dawn of Fantasy does feature some massive battles thanks to the use of squad-based groups: a single goblin raider, for example, actually consists of 30 units on the screen, amplifying the amount of carnage seen during battle. There is hardly any difference between the three races, as everyone has access to the basic unit types: melee, cavalry, ranged, and siege. Dawn of Fantasy uses the classic melee-beats-cavalry-beats-ranged-beats-melee balancing (I hope I have that right), so it’s pretty easy to figure out whom to attack with what. Units gain experience over time, and their health or attack can be upgraded. You are given some basic options for formations, mainly spacing for your infantry units to lessen the impact of ranged fire. Combat has some issues, of course. It can take a couple of seconds to units to notice nearby enemy units before engaging them, a problem when so many units are in a gigantic group and it’s difficult to give specific attack instructions. Also, pathfinding is very inconsistent: you can have two units leave from the same location going to the same destination and take completely different routes. While the game does provide a handy listing of all your military groups along the left-hand side of the screen, peasants disappear occasionally for some reason and they cannot find resource locations that are out of their field of view (so you must move them near a gold mine before ordering them to mine gold). The AI seems to be OK, although it’s hard to tell when most of the land battles involve a huge mass of units clipping into each other and the sieges are equally as messy. Still, I found the AI to be competent in storming a castle and engaging my troops with appropriate counters, so there are no obvious shortcomings here.

Dawn of Fantasy plays like a poor-man’s version of Stronghold. The addition of online components is only mildly interesting: you can attack other armies and towns, but you can’t keep the towns and the game clearly focuses on single-player quests and town expansion. I can’t emphasize enough how slow the game is, with resource collection and building construction literally taking hours, if not days, of real time; I suppose you are meant to undertake quests (or sleep) while the house takes fifteen minutes, the blacksmith takes six hours, and wood is gathered at the rate of one log per minute. When it takes several real-world days to be able to afford your first units, people are certain to lose interest. Sure, this makes the game technically have more longevity, but that doesn’t make it better. The three races (Humans, Orcs, and Elves) are indistinct and vary little in their overall strategy: each side has access to the usual types of units (melee, ranged, cavalry, and siege) that gain experience over time. The AI seems decent enough and the battles are quite large, but lack complex strategy. The military-driven kingdom wars mode and siege-heavy skirmish games are both forgettable alternatives to the online kingdoms. Dawn of Fantasy is also hard on new players, as there is no tutorial, no manual, and poor in-game documentation that barely covers the game’s mechanics. The graphics are impressive when zoomed out, but the textures and model animations fall short when viewing the battle up close. In addition, Dawn of Fantasy suffers from an unpolished presentation, with performance issues and other assorted bugs. Dawn of Fantasy also lacks a unique feature to grab your attention: there is frankly no reason to join the war in Generic Fantasy World #322. The exceeding slow pace, common units and buildings, and superfluous online features hinder Dawn of Fantasy’s appeal in the strategy market.

Monday, October 10, 2011

A Game of Thrones: Genesis Review


This review also appears at


For a game with a well-known license, the graphics of A Game of Thrones: Genesis are bland and unimpressive. A distinctive fantasy setting does not come through, and it feels like A Game of Thrones: Genesis started as a generic fantasy strategy game and then acquired the license far along in development. Nobody walking by the game would say, “oh, that’s Game of Thrones, isn’t it?”. The terrain varies between green and brown, with some nice coastal and mountain features, but all of the towns and castles are identical in appearance. The units are very small and usually can’t be identified based on appearance (I have to rely on the icon flags); the game doesn’t allow you to zoom in very far, and all battles lack a majestic feel because of this. The combat itself is bland anyway, with sporadic animations when units engage each other. While the graphics fall short, the interface is good: all of your units are listed along the left-hand side of the screen, and right-clicking on an object always performs the appropriate action for that unit. The only thing I would add is a subtle indication of idle units, but other than that, it’s easy to find your units. Like the graphics, the sound design lacks the level of quality you’d expect from a licensed game: the voice acting and the music are both generic at best. I would have expected a better atmosphere in A Game of Thrones: Genesis, but the game certainly does not deliver.






Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Nuclear Dawn Review

Nuclear Dawn, developed and published by InterWave Studios.
The Good: Mix of shooting with light strategy, four classes with varied weaponry, neat HUD, multiplatform, balanced unlocks
The Not So Good: Very limited tactics for infantry assaulting enemy buildings, restrictive classes place you in a single role, shallow strategy component, unnecessarily drawn-out games, no AI bots (for now)
What say you? This first person shooter features a commander placing structures with a lack of flexibility and depth: 5/8

Albert Einstein famously said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but it shall be simulated in a first person shooter and real-time strategy hybrid called Nuclear Dawn.” That guy knew everything. Yes, Nuclear Dawn is another retail game born of a mod (another piece of evidence showing the importance of the mod community to PC gaming), following the path of the likes of Red Orchestra and Natural Selection. This particular title has most players shooting each other in the face, while one person on each time is the commander who can place structures to assist in destroying the enemy base. The computer gaming market is all about combining genres these days; I’m still waiting for my MMOFPSRTSRPG-adventure. Will Nuclear Dawn offer enough innovation to stand out in an ever-crowded shooter marketplace?

Nuclear Dawn features decent near-future graphics. All of the level designs are urban and maze-like, a necessity given the power-line-driven strategy model, and consist of generic metal buildings set in different climates. The characters are animated well enough but lack detail, with people encased in featureless armored suits. Both sides look identical from a distance, and I was only able to tell them apart using the game’s informative HUD. The HUD is probably the best part of the graphics, as it gives the impression of information superimposed onto your helmet’s visor, without being visually restrictive. The ammo counts are really helpful, appearing directly over your gun, and icons above friendly and spotted enemy soldiers show the interconnectivity of the future battlefield. The sound effects are commonplace: typical and forgettable weapon effects for each gun, little voice acting when units are spotted or buildings are under attack, and an annoying ear ringing when you die that gets plenty annoying. The game’s settings specifies a music volume, but I’d be hard-pressed to say when music was actually playing. Overall, Nuclear Dawn delivers a solid package for the price and indie-developer roots, highlighted by the futuristic heads-up display.

Nuclear Dawn features an eternal struggle between two factions, fighting over the urban outposts of the near future. The two sides are indistinguishable: they play the same, with the same classes and almost identical buildings, so it’s a matter of whether your favorite color is “red” or “blue.” Game modes. The “warfare” game mode involves destroying the enemy base by any means necessary (namely a rocket launcher), and there are plans to add team deathmatch in a future update. There are six maps in the game and all follow the same general pattern: a maze with resource points scattered throughout. The game supports thirty-two players online, but Nuclear Dawn currently lacks AI bots or a practice mode of any kind (there are plans to add them in a future patch). I think I would rather have terrible bots than no bots at all, so you can at least practice the game before jumping online. There are a series of tutorial videos that explain the basics, but newcomers will take some time learning the ins and outs of each class and weapon combination. Nuclear Dawn has unlocks in the form of gizmos: they provide more advanced ammunition, which is a small enough bonus not to impact the game, but still something for veteran players to enjoy. None of the advanced ammunition types are required to succeed, and you get access to all of the weapons and classes from the start. Finally, Nuclear Dawn works on both Windows and Macintosh thanks to its use of the Source engine.

Nuclear Dawn has four classes with ten loadouts total, so there are options for any type of player here. Weapons are tied to a specific loadout in each class, so there is no Brink-level flexibility here. The stealth class can cloak (for a fairly lengthy period of time) and comes in assassin (with a submachine gun) and sniper flavors. The assault class can spot cloaked enemies and can bring an assault rifle, grenade launcher, or sniper rifle. The support class has medics, engineers, and flamethrowers. Finally, the exo class has a chaingun or rocket launcher. The classes are very restrictive, and usually you are given a terrible secondary weapon to accentuate your primary role: medics get a machine pistol, engineers get a lowly shotgun, and the rocket launcher comes with a pistol. This lack of flexibility really forces you to work with your teammates, so there are definitely no lone wolves to be seen in Nuclear Dawn.

One commander per side can place buildings using resources collected from captured points. The most interesting aspect of the strategy half of Nuclear Dawn is the use of power: it is required for all buildings to function, and it must be distributed from your main base or remote power generators using power lines that obey line of sight (meaning they must “see” another pole to transfer energy). This means you can cut off a forward base by attacking the intermediate power lines: a fascinating option. The rest of the strategy game is disappointing, though: the commander can place forward spawn points, turrets, a research building that enables more advanced classes, and resupply depots, but that’s it. The basic strategy is to slowly expand towards the enemy base and cover chokepoints and spawn points with overly powerful turrets that have high health and high lethality (an annoying combination!). Buildings play such an important role in the game, especially defensive structures, but there are only two specific units (an exo equipped with a rocket launcher, or an assault with a grenade launcher) that can deal significant damage to them. This leads to a mid-game grind as neither side can dispose of the enemy structures in a timely manner, and the buildings are cheap and easy for the commander to construct. In addition, it takes too many shots to destroy a building, so it takes a considerable amount of time to slowly advance through the enemy structures, significantly and unnecessarily increasing the length of the game well past the point at which the victor is determined. Respawn times are also quick, so as long as you have the forward spawn base protected, reinforcements will always be ready to add to the deadlock. Soldier movement and health is varied according to their class, but death for any class except the slow-moving heavy exo is pretty quick. The use of forward spawn bases reduces the amount of running necessary to traverse the map and tends to concentrate the action more, at the expense of taking much longer to determine a winner. The maze-like, multi-story map layouts also keep you on your toes, and caution is suggested when nearing the next corner. Overall, Nuclear Dawn has a definite lack of balance because of the high building health and uselessness of the classes that can destroy structures in any other role. A tank has a machine gun to deal with infantry, but the exo in Nuclear Dawn gets a pistol? I realize why this decision was made: to make people work together. But that doesn’t make it a good decision.

There are two main issues I have with Nuclear Dawn: the lack of depth in the strategic game, and the narrow class restrictions. First, the commander has really limited options at his disposal: just expand outward using power lines to connect turrets, forward spawns, and research buildings that unlock a single new weapon per class. I wasn’t expecting an extremely detailed experience, but there are simply no interesting decisions for the commander to make, other than which of the maze-like paths to follow towards the enemy base. Nuclear Dawn has good variety of options in the game’s four classes, as each class has three weapon loadouts that perform a very specific role on the battlefield, from the siege exo that takes down enemy buildings to the assault medic that throws out health packs. That said, the role restrictions are severe, overemphasizing teamwork in the game. For example, the aforementioned siege exo (the best/only solution for enemy turrets and structures) equipped with a rocket launcher has a pistol as their other weapon. Hooray. Heck, the engineer in Battlefield 3 gets a carbine rifle to compliment their rocket launcher so they can at least do something if enemy units come near. Nuclear Dawn is all about placing buildings while removing the enemy’s, so it’s shocking that only two of the game’s ten loadouts can do any type of significant damage to enemy structures. This really kills the pace of the game and leads to a lot of stalemates in the center of the map until one side can break through. Even when one side has tipped the scale, there are so many buildings with so much health that it can take ten or twenty minutes of “clean up” to advance and destroy the enemy base: tedious. I will, however, compliment the game’s engrossing and informative heads-up display, the ability to play on both Macintosh and Windows machines thanks to the Source engine, and the low importance of gaining unlocks. Still, only coordinated teams will be able to conquer the world of Nuclear Dawn, and the strategy elements will leave tacticians wanting a lot more.