Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire is a game by Stardock that I had not heard much about that came out a few years ago originally.  My own personal take on it is that it's kind of like a combination of Civilization and Starcraft. It's a spacegame where you colonize planets and create fleets of ships to take over your enemies. Or you could use diplomacy to win, but where's the fun in that! Generally the other civilizations won't be very friendly anyway.

You've got things like tech trees, where you can research in Empire (things like optimizing your planets, trade and income, etc.), Warfare (self explanitory), and Manipulation (allowing you to trade with players and intimidate or improve your relationship with other civilizations).

Fleet logistics allows you to increase the size of your fleet step by step. There are two separate trees, one for Capital ships, and one for general fleet supply. All ships use a certain amount of fleet supply; scouts cost only 3 or so, smaller frigates around 6-8, cruisers (a little powerful than frigates but still fairly small) somewhere around 14, and Capital ships (the big guns) each cost 50 fleet supply. There's credits (money), as well as crystal and metal (think gas and minerals in Starcraft). Almost everything in the game costs a combination of these. Planets usually come with a few asteroids of either metal or crystal or a combination, and you have an income of a certain amount per second in all three. Increased fleet supply uses a percentage of this as well. The more you increase your maximum supply, the greater the percentage becomes, you you have to keep an eye on how you run everything. I try to keep it small at first and use my income to research upgrades so that my ships are the best they can be before creating a huge fleet.

An added, random element to the game is pirates. You could perhaps compare them to the barbarians of Civilization, as they are a neutral force that hates everyone. However, unlike the barbarians they do not merely roam.

No, the pirates can be bought. Every 15 minutes or so they leave for one player on a raid from their base. You can put a bounty on other players to give them a hard time and yourself an edge, or just to keep the brunt off of yourself if you've got a bounty as well. It's a nasty trick to use if you're intending to attack someone, thereby splitting their efforts as they're forced to defend themselves from two forces. You can take the pirates out of the game completely by destroying their base, but that's not easy. Every time there is a raid, a new group  of pirates is generated to go on the raid, and they return to their base if they are not destroyed. This means that the base gets fuller and fuller as the game goes on until it is a terrifying force to overcome. You can just deal with them as well however, as it isn't a requirement to get rid of them to win, merely a convenience.

It's a bit like a game of hot potato when you're initially exploring the star system. When will you find the pirate base? That's a lot of pirates, and that's only the start! Not good! I know one scout who's not coming home, may he rest in peace.

One of the other cool features of the game is how detailed visually it is, and the scope. Just using your mouse wheel you can zoom in or out.

From looking at the separate solar systems at a distance..

 To seeing each planet of a single star system at a glance...

To viewing one planet and it's structures..

You can even see the planet and it's structures up close and cinematic.

 

 Here's what a small fleet looks like at a distance inside one planet's gravity well. At a distance they are displayed as orange (or whatever colour you've chosen for your empire) symbols of representation as they are too small still to see clearly otherwise.

 Zooming a little further in, you can see the frigates themselves.

 And here's a frigate (the smallest, remember?) up close and personal. It looks like it's big enough still to be holding quite a crew however!

That's pretty radical wouldn't you say? Remember, we started here!

So there's a lot going on, a lot of different views you can take. Generally you don't spend a lot of time zoomed all the way in to look at your ships, unless you're in a really good battle and want to watch the other ships pop. I apologize I didn't get a good screenshot of that... my enemies were shy this particular game, but perhaps I'll remedy that in the future!

It feels good to win! (That's my friend's star system, completely taken over while I was still trying to fish out my sheepish star-mates!)

Left 4 Dead 2 - The Parish

Having got most of the easier achievements in L4D2 together, my sister and I have been looking for more difficult ones to do. Mostly because we're both indecisive as heck and can never decide on what level to play without some kind of guidance!

We decided to brave one with a perceived higher difficulty, crossing the bridge of 'The Parish' level finale in under 3 minutes. The whole level is a gauntlet, running across a bridge that's been bombed out by the military while zombies swarm from all sides. It seemed impossible to get everyone this achievement, as at our best we could get maybe once person to the helicopter at the end alive, though most times we failed all together.

It became more and more apparent that this level somewhat goes against the grain of the rest of the game, at least for people at our skill level (which is low!). The game relies heavily on teamwork, however this level we seemed to have our best chances when we just went for it and ignored everyone else. As long as you weren't dead, merely knocked down to the ground, one person could get on the helicopter and take off (it won't take off while other people are alive and running)! So it became our tactic to just make a mad dash for the helicopter, and if someone was behind still when another person made it, it was their solemn duty to jump off the bridge so that the helicopter would take off within the time limit. Surprisingly, this worked remarkably well, and even the bridge-jumpers got their achievement.

I know now however to look out for my sister in a real zombie apocalypse, she was the best at ruthless play! She made it to the helicopter the most times and the fastest, leaving the rest of us and our helpless screams in the dust! (jk, I still love you)

 

Sorry broskies, this is one bridge I gotta burn! You don't have to be faster than the zombies, just faster than your friends right?

Civilation V

I was just starting to get into the swing of Civ IV when V came out. As such, I didn't get Civ V immediately, not particularly ready to re-learn the game over again. However, later the game went on sale on Steam, so that's when I finally caved.

The new game is quite shiny and stylish in appearance. Everything is very attractive visually. It's been changed quite a lot, new civilizations available and different sorts of benefits for each.

There are also the inclusion of 'City-States' in V. They aren't actual players, but merely one-city mini civilizations essentially. You can't trade with them but you can win their favour by completing tasks for them, in which case they'll give you their resources. Or you can simply destroy them. They add another aspect to diplomacy however, as you can choose to protect them. If you go to war with another civilization, your City-States go to war as well, with each other and the offending civilizations that protect them. Each City-State has a particular trait, such as Cultural or Military. In the event that you do go to war, Military is a good trait to have at your side, as they will periodically give you a brand-spanking-new military unit, and tend to have quite a few of their own.

Unfortunately war in general is not looked well upon in the game. That is one major change that I'm not sure how I feel about. Perhaps it is more accurate, but it means that you really can't have an easy time if you choose to be a warmonger. Other civilizations will hate you, forever. Even if they didn't like the guy you were wailing on, they still find you despicable for taking care of their problem. The nerve of some people, amirite?

Anyway, it's a good looking game, still quite fun. But don't expect to be going on too many religious campaigns or conquering the world without some complaint!

Nebuchadnezzar thinks you're a warmongering douche!

Fable 3

I remember playing the original Fable quite a while ago. I skipped number 2  simply because of lack of funds, interest, and the PC version not coming out immediately as I seem to recall. I'm also told however that it is an inferior game and I'm not missing a whole lot, so I'll save my money for something else! Fable 3 was on sale on Steam however at one point so I decided to go for it.

It's no Dragon Age, but it is entertaining at least. While set in a medieval, fantasy sort of setting, it incorporates elements of steam punk. There's still swords and magic, but there's also guns, industry, and strange mechanical contraptions. All in all, a fun sort of environment.

It's a little more goofy than Dragon Age however. It has humour and it doesn't take itself quite as seriously. This isn't a bad thing of course, I love humor, especially British humour. It just means that it's not quite intense of a story to immerse yourself in. Whereas Dragon Age is the kind of fantasy story that keeps you engaged and wanting to find out more, I suppose Fable 3 is simply a bit more casual even if interesting.

It does however have something major going for it. I never bothered to read any reviews nor do I know anyone who played it and so didn't have any spoilers ruin the story for me.

For most of the game you're lead to believe that it's a fairly straight forward story. Your brother, the King, is an asshole, and nobody likes him. It's your job to overthrow him and make things better (or worse if you're playing an 'evil' character though I think it makes more sense if you're good)! Never for a moment does the game really elude to the fact that anything else is going on, or that there's more to the story then that simple objective. You travel the lands winning favour and gaining allies so you can take your brother down.

It isn't until you're down to your last potential allies that the story suddenly takes a turn for the dark and mythical.

One of your commanding allies is unexpectedly executed, and it starts to go downhill from there. His last communication to you was that you would find allies in a far off desert land. However, when you rush there you're shipwrecked along the way, losing track of another of your important allies and left alone with your original companion from the start, Walter, your mentor. Having no real idea of where you are, the only way to move forward seems to be through a dark cave. That's not ominous at all!

However there's some kind of magical barrier covering the entrance. Skeletons laying in the dirt around the barrier hold a journal or two, though it seems to be merely filled with insane ramblings. In a feat of brilliance, Walter finds another journal with strange phrases in it and decides to read from it. What could possibly go wrong there? Conveniently the barrier opens and you're able to transverse down into the dark, suspicious cave, before the barrier closes behind you again. No worries, I'm sure that's perfectly normal. Let's congratulate Walter for becoming a novice magician!

The further you go in the cave the more ominous things become predictably. You encounter a creature, or perhaps entity is a better word, called The Crawler. You never see the Crawler much, but you certainly hear him. He speaks cryptic, slightly foreboding words and sends fleets of shadows to attack you, jeering all the way. It's actually fairly disturbing, playing off the darkness and seeming to suggest that the characters will 'lose all the light' within them. Having found skeletons above the cave above, one starts to realize that they likely met an end to the Crawler, though not before having the time to go crazy first. Unfortunately, Walter starts to lose his shit as well.

Having always been one of the stronger, more resolute characters from the beginning, this is slightly concerning. At one point the torch is blown out and he all but panics, but manages to light it again and throw it into the Crawler's face, presumably killing or scaring him away. Unfortunately this is only a ruse, and it seems the Crawler has an unhealthy fascination with Walter!

At a convenient moment when you've jumped down but Walter has yet to, the Crawler returns and drags him away. At this point, with the new trend of allies disappearing I was starting to believe that Walter was actually quite dead and that I wasn't going to have any allies to face my brother with. It was rather a pain since I'd put so much work into getting them in the first place, but I thought perhaps this was the game's way of 'toughening up' the hero.

It turns out that Walter at least is still alive, though blinded by the Crawler. You have to fight even more powerful constructs and shadows before you're able to free Walter from the Crawler's clutches and drag Walter to safety in the sunlight at the end of the cave.

It soon becomes apparent that the Crawler is actually the real villain of the game, almost killing your character as well. As it turns out, your brother knew about the whole thing! All his hard ass laws and extortionate taxes were in an effort to prepare for the Crawler coming to your lands. You have the option to follow in his footsteps or try to raise the money even while maintaining benevolent policies, though this is much more difficult.

I thought this was a fairly clever twist, I certainly never saw it coming or expected it, though I admit I was glad for the extra 'oomph' to the story. I'm also proud to say that I was able to save my kingdom while remaining a benevolent ruler, removing child labor and other such harsh laws. The only real downside is that the 'good' luck is rather dorky, and the evil quite badass. But these are small details!

Fable 3 is a game I'd recommend for anyone who's a bit bored and wants something to do but doesn't need it to be earth shatteringly good. The added bonus is that you can actually join up with your friends and play in their world and vice versa. Knowing how much money you needed at the end of the game to be able to save your kingdom, I made sure to donate my extra funds after I finished to my sister when she played next. I didn't tell her what it was for, just that she was going to need it!

Left 4 Dead 2

I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 lately on a fairly regular basis actually, just a little now and then when I need a break from other home work. Strangely it's been helping me keep in touch with my sister who lives abroad! Family bonding over zombie slaughter! Though I'm not very skilled at FPS games, the teamwork and cooperation aspect of the game makes it worth it. As long as my team mates don't mind having to carry a nub around! And don't mind getting shot now and then. A game with friendly fire enabled means no one is safe with me around! Especially with so many guns that allow me to adopt the 'spray and pray' technique! I've tried to take up the sniper role where possible, I always like using sniper rifles in games, though there's not really the perfect setup for it in a zombie game where you are often having to run for your life and don't have time to stop and aim. If you and your team loiter in one area for too long you're punished with a wave of zombies suddenly zerging you as well, called 'the horde'.

There are all the classic weapons though you'd want in a zombie apocalypse: shotgun, axe, chainsaw. Even a cricket bat (Shaun of the Dead anyone?) for our over the sea friends. I have to admit, there's nothing quite as cathartic and satisfying as standing in a narrow corridor with a chainsaw and letting the horde funnel themselves straight into the blade!

End of September

Due to some crazy events happening in life, this has been fairly sparse as of late! Rest assured I have still been gaming (I'm sure you were worried)!

I will now summarize.

MINECRAFT.

My sister, some friends and myself decided that we wanted to make our own server where we could build together unmolested by other random nubs and jerks. Since I'm the most experienced in computers, servers and such (not sure that's saying much) of the group, I decided that I would try my hand at setting up a server. They've made it fairly easy these days, with a wiki and all to help you set it up and configure. It was even quite easy to get it set up so that people outside my LAN could join! The only real downfall is that it's being run from an $80 refurbished Dell computer, so it can't really handle more than a handful of people at the best of times. In any event! This post will be rather image heavy, I do apologize.

We started off setting up a village around the spawn point with the intention of protecting any newcomers from the monsters outside, until they get their bearings and such!

We started off with an initial 'landing pad' (the black and red setup in the center) where players would exactly spawn in the first time, though later the game/server goofed and started spawning people into the ocean the first time instead. Still haven't fixed that quite yet.

After we created the landing pad, we branched out, leaving it as the city center as it were. We decided to create some 'temples' in the surrounding that would act as useful locations for newcomers. The first was a 'Temple of the Day' with a cute little galaxy/sun thing on the roof courtesy of yours truly. The inside is merely a gathering place with chairs and tables that you can't use but look nice anyway.

Next we created the 'Temple of the Night' in contrast! It's got a big glowing crescent moon on it. It also serves as a dormitory, which seemed appropriate. Beds do however serve a purpose in Minecraft and can be used. They help set your spawn point, so that even though the game likes to spawn people in the middle of nowhere under water, once we've got them to the city they can reset their spawn point to a safe location.

Next we decided to cater to the real purpose of the game- building! This often requires players to craft things however. So we created the 'Temple of Fire', which is really just a cool looking forge (with multiple furnaces for all your cooking/smelting/burning needs)! Look at all that lava! Must be toasty.

To go with this, we created a sister temple to house the crafting stations (on top) and chests of useful goods (inside). The last and largest of the temples, a giant tree house: The Temple of Forest.

We made sure to fill in the village space with other things like a farm and some giant mushrooms (one actually making up a house!) as well as a glowing lake that can be seen from a small viewing area.

Pretty!

Next we branched out, deciding to create even larger towns and villages further on from 'Newbville'. We created far-stretching roads lined with glowstone(to shed light on them) and lined with small canals to discourage certain monsters that can move blocks.

 

 The first road divides after a while to lead to two separate temples. The colours are meant to match the temple they are leading to appropriately. This road leads to the new Forest Temple and village (left) and the Desert Temple and village (right)

It seemed appropriate to make the desert temple a giant pyramid. On the inside will be ruins starting to be excavated, and we will create a village around the end of the road in time.

The other path lead to the Forest Temple, which we decided to make an even giant tree, one on a massive scale to match the pyramid. So far it's just a 'stump', but even that took a massive amount of work, several hours at least to excavate the inside and make the ground flat, as well as build the stump to such a height.

The surrounding village we decided would be a series of tree houses and platforms connected. It's still under construction as well but here's an example!

The original road we created was by far the longest, long enough that you couldn't see the city even with the farthest viewing distance selected in settings, not by a long shot. It was a pain in the butt to make, let me tell you, and I didn't even make it the first time! I merely helped my friend re-colour it when we decided it would lead to the Sky Temple (and village) and that more appropriate colours were needed.

 

At the end of the path was a giant floating island, as well as more in the distance that we decided will someday house a village of sky-island-houses. My sister had claimed this one though, wanting to build a giant tower that extended past the clouds. Unfortunately they changed the height limit so that you can't build past the clouds anymore, so until I find a mod to change that, my sister's poor little tower will be unfinished for now. But in lieu of that, we built an awesome and giant winding and glowing staircase that lead up to the island as well as cascading waterfalls leading off from it! Hopefully that makes up for it a bit.

We've also created little 'easter eggs' around our server world for anyone that comes to explore, like a mushroom village and a house in the middle of a lake. There's also secret rooms with special loot, but it would be cheating to show you those!

I hope you enjoyed this little 'tour' of our Minecraft server! Further bulletins as events warrant. Expect an update on Warhammer Online: The Reckoning next!

Week 1 - Part 2

Continuing on as I explored 'Forsaken World' further. There's five races you can choose from; the typical Human, Elf, Dwarf fantasy options are available, as well as Stonemen (who are only male and only tank class), and Vampires (who are very Castlevania-esque but have more options at least). As I like to play pretty things and I hate tanking, I haven't looked at the Stonemen yet, but they seem to do their job well.

There are two things I noticed right away that are quite different from other MMO's, for better or for worse (or for little consequence!). The first is the inclusion of astrological signs. In character creation you select a birthdate for your character (and consequently a sign). There is a gauge at the top of the screen that shows which celestial sign is currently in swing. Each sign is lucky for anyone who was 'born' under it, as well as two other signs. It seems to cycle every hour or so. You can also pray every hour, and the gods may or may not answer you with material goods or buffs. It seems to work better when you're under a lucky sign. A neat little addition, though overall  not really that important to the game as a whole.

The second thing is that there is a dual-monetary system. There is a separate money system for interacting with NPCs; buying training or goods from merchants costs 'soul coins'. These coins are bound to you and can't be traded. Then there are normal coins that can be used to trade with other players and buy things off of the auction house and such. I'm not sure why there needs to be two separate systems, or if it's particularly useful. If I've been low on soul coins I've bought low-priced items off of the auction house with normal coins and then merely sold them to vendors for soul coins to buy my skills and such.

Dungeons (instanced locations where you can take a party for extra good gear and experience) are like pulling teeth in this game once you get past the first low-level noob dungeon. You can sign up and let the game put you with random people, and occasionally it will do so without bothering to assign an actual proper tank or healer, leaving you to struggle through and use your wits, though it somewhat defeats the purpose of having fun if even teamwork and clever play still leaves you feeling frustrated and unrewarded.

One of the first apparent ripoffs I noticed in game seemed to resemble the World of Warcraft kobold. I've seen many representations of kobolds, ranging from anywhere between vaguely dog-looking to mostly dragon-looking. Usually dragon or lizard-like seems to be the more 'canon' representation. I thought WoW's version was fairly unique. Now, Forsaken World doesn't call these kobolds, they're 'Ratkin', but they do still look suspiciously familiar...

You no take candle!!

Here's some more rip offs for your enjoyment!

Forsaken World caster and demon pony... and WoW caster and demon pony!!

WoW Mechanostrider ..... Forsaken World Mechanost- Mech.. Leaper

WoW ram mount .... Forsaken World ram mount!