Trying many titles, Very Old to Old

Tags

Spore, Steam, World of Tanks, Xenonauts

GAME 1 : Xenonauts

Xenonauts game continues and has reached February 1980.     I have several countries at maximum funding, along with four bases each having four interception aircraft.

I decided to add another dropship, so I bought a Charlie and enough recruits in North America to crew it up.    They do not have good gear, given that everything I’m making takes forever and goes to the African crew; but they were started on moving up the ladder in ranks and abilities.

Then the Terror mission hit me in Panama City.

Thanks to being on easy mode and having the ability to save and reload, I managed to get through this one after perhaps a dozen false starts.     Go one way, and the Reapers eat your squad and wipe you out.    Maybe I should go this way instead ?    Reapers wipe me out.    Let’s head down the center instead.    Sebilisians shoot us to death, leaving the last two guys cowering under cover – where the Reapers found them and ate them.

I finally got a decent start and managed to lose a single squaddie – only the third guy killed in the game.    Matt Damon sprinted through the streets of Panama to spot the Lizards and take one out.    As he slipped the full auto clip for his rifle to “on”, he spotted a second Lizard and his anxiety increased; he ran past the bastard as he emptied his clip into the beastie, dropping it with a death rattle.

The second Lizard he’d spotted was taken down by his squadmates as the covered him.   Squatting down, he barely has time to react before finding out there were three Lizards standing next to each other, as the survivor clips him and he knows no more.

The survivors managed to slowly work their way across the map and wipe out the aliens.

Getting to this point took almost a week.    I was frustrated enough that I found myself playing additional games instead.

GAME 2 : World of Tanks

You don’t HAVE to play the game like a completely obsessed ADHD-driven teenager with Aspbergers.  (But it does help…..)     Instead, taking advantage of the new log in and get credits feature (50,000 per day!) makes me happy to move forward towards the usual holding amount of 8 million credits (just 400,000 to go), and I get in a match or three before logging off.

The M3 Stuart from China is now elited and also my best “Spotter” having gotten two games in a row with the special medal.

GAME 3 : Spore

Spore got a bad rap when it came out.     The game’s team didn’t manage gamers expectations very well and led the rabid-fan segment to believe there’d be much more to the game.   The truncated release version spurred tons of “But you promised!” comments.   Add in nasty DRM with a splash of EA-hating, and people just didn’t like this title at all.

I played a complete game again over the last few days.     Other than getting it confirmed to me that yes, the Galactic Adventures Add-on sucks, I completely enjoyed the game once again.

Now, EA is not yet done having problems with this title.   My username, for whatever reason, could not log in to the game’s servers.    Surprisingly, creating a new one was a matter of filling out the web form – no need to tie a key in to EA’s servers, probably because this title is so old – and I’m up and running again.  All my creatures are still sitting on one of my PC’s, but really, I don’t care that much, to find them and reintegrate them into the game.    The only nagging problem here is those achievements don’t mean much given this being the fourth time I’ve reset them.

But it’s a lot of fund to play through all the stages.   Even though the details are very wrong, I love playing the story of Evolution, and on towards a simple yet engaging future of space exploration.    Will Wright’s last game remains bittersweet.

“GAME” 4 : Steam

Having raced tanks to the top of my charts in World of Tanks, naturally I end up doing the same thing with Steam.    I keep buying $3 games and trying out other things, but I’ve moved Spore into my top ten games played which it deserves, and keep trying out whatever is fun (Carmageddon) and what isn’t (Age of Wonders III).

We may soon have three Steam accounts in the house – Dad, Son, Daughter.    My daughter is making videos with Garry’s Mod, which at the moment consist of slide shows set to music.   She’s doing a good job with them, and she’s trying to figure out how to animate characters and what not.   I haven’t looked at this stuff at all however.    Then my son is fascinated with Beam.NRG Drive and can’t wait until it comes out.    I’m thinking that each of them should have separate accounts instead of sharing one, even if they have to share a computer at the moment.   I don’t know.     I don’t have to decide until Beam.NRG Drive is available for purchase at least.

And for the moment, Dad’s still working on his Steam Game Backlog.

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What has happened to this blog ?

Tags

City Domination, Marvel Heroes, Xenonauts

When there’s a lack of things to post about, then, well, I guess I don’t post.

I should have something to write about City Domination sometime soon.   I don’t want to commemorate again “I’m going to do XYZ”, rather, I’ll commemorate actual accomplishments.

Marvel Heroes is not bloggable at this stage.    It’s childishly easy.   Literally.   I turned my 11-year-old son loose on it and he didn’t get killed either.    So the question is, when will Captain America make 60; we’ll find out when it happens.    At that point I think I might want to move the difficulty level up.

Xenonauts is not particularly bloggable.    I’ve moved along in my Easy Game #2, and have yet to lose a single soldier.     (I guess I have learned a few things).   Three bases are established with possibly a fourth one coming soon.    Each of the three has a minimum of three foxtrot interceptors, which are catching most of the UFO’s which appear.

And that’s what’s going on, pretty much.

Fail State

Tags

Xenonauts

Well, that didn’t take long.     I gave up on my Xenonauts game.

I established three bases on the world : North America, Europe, and Indochina.     The aliens decided to attack a vulnerable base (Europe), at which I had built no facilities for defense.    No missile facility.   No soldiers for defense.    So they destroyed it and with it went my hopes for finishing the game.   Well, plenty of lessons learned there.

Three bases may have been too many.    I was also holding on to a lot of money, and fat lot of good that did me – for a few hundred thousand I could have defended the base.    But the idea of trying to dig out of that whole didn’t appeal to me at all.

So I started a second game immediately.    This time, I built a base in the Sudan, and a second base at roughly Shanghai.    Both these bases should pretty much cover pieces of all continents except America, especially once multiple radar bases are established.

Having re-learned the squad tactics necessary in the game, I’ve managed to play for three game weeks – and eight alien crash site investigations – without getting anyone killed.    Research is going along well, and I’m already producing Jackal armor.     Let’s see how Game #2 comes out.

Xenos and Marvels

Tags

Marvel Heroes, Xenonauts

I’ve continued blowing through the levels of Marvel Heroes.    Levels don’t seem to mean too much – just enjoying the chaotic combat and letting the character power element just take a back seat.    Next step, at some point, will be trying out the red terminals for an actual challenge.

Woo Hoo ! Level 50.

Captain America is currently level 51 and I should be able to reach 60 in, perhaps, two weeks time of just casual playing.   Or a couple of nights of intense constant combat, but that’s starting to get boring.

He’s been geared up with all uniques and continues to collect the relic items.   Relics, for the uninitiated, are items that stack and provide more power the more relics you collect.   Presumably there’s some limit to the size of the stack.

So, tiring of Marvel Heroes, I started up Xenonauts.    Boy, this game is the XCOM successor all right – it’s almost exactly the same game that I played back in 1995.    And it’s a total blast.

I started out with Easy mode, which should make the game pretty simple, and very quickly built up three bases – NA, EU, and China.    This covers most of the planet and helps me to keep the funding going.

Covering most of the globe into December 1979.

The gameplay is standard – alien UFO’s dodge around the planet, and you seek to spot them with radar.    If they’re spotted, you can send jets up to intercept and shoot them down.

One of the things the game failed to tell me – I can send up *more than one* aircraft on each intercept.     I can take both of the Condor class planes that you get at the start and simply click on both to send a two-plane convoy after an alien.   I only figured this out after getting lots of planes shot down and wondering, “What do you mean, Easy mode?”.

Other things I should have paid more attention to – setting up the soldier templates with how I wanted my soldiers geared up.    This helps a lot rather than tediously giving each soldier the equipment I wanted.     In the end, I just gave each person items individually.   Right now the squaddies are decked out in Jackal armor with a mix of laser pistols and laser rifles.

Ready to plink away at the aliens.

You also need to research and understand the aliens technology, which I’m working on slowly.    I bought a second lab at a second base, and have it crewed with a few scientists.    I’m unsure how careful to be about maintenance expenses, given a few careful gameplay tweaks the developers implemented.

Firstly, you can do an “airstrike” on a crash site you do not want to attack, for instant cash.   Second, if you recover items from the aliens they get sold.   This means you can’t outfit your squad with plasma rifles from the aliens – you have to make them yourself.    This generates more money for you obviously, but I’m still getting the hang of it in this first game.

Heh.   First game.    I can’t recall the last time I finished an XCOM game.   But I sure want to finish this one.

Tactical mode – dead aliens to the left

This is a good, good game.   Very deep and requires a lot of time to play.    It’s perfect for me.    With my premium time expired in World of Tanks I expect this and Marvel Heroes to be games of choice for the time being.