Alien Breed 2: Assault

Why is it that in every "Discover a ghost ship swarming with zerg-like aliens" game, there is identically colored alien goop covering half the ship?

Wait.

Why is that even a question?  Is the sci-fi branch of survival horror so saturated with zerg-infested derelicts that a new ultra-specific genre has been born?

For that matter, if you've given me an assault rifle and as much ammo as I can use, why is this survival horror again?  There is neither fear nor even really tension, even on "veteran."  Just a lot of beasties popping out of monster closets and getting mown down by my character, a former Space Marine with "super-human"  determination and tenacity.  Also the longest active-duty service record in more than three centuries.

This. Is. Not. Survival. Horror. 

I'm not enjoying this game.  However, it hasn't managed to kill me yet, so onward we slog.

Assassinated by a ruthless AI ::sad face::

SPACE!  Also robots!  Killer death robots!  I'm not sure how I let AI War slip through the cracks until now, but this was the first time I played it.

Which was a mistake on multiple levels.

The game is fast, brutal and complex, with 1-8 human players (no bots), up against 2 AI that are clever and well-equipped.  I certainly wasn't experienced enough to get anywhere close to a win on my first playthrough, especially on hard difficulty, by myself.

Also, its an amazing game.  I was so engrossed that over a nearly four-hour campaign I only managed to take six screenshots.  I think I made a halfway decent showing of myself.

Age of Empires 3: Never Bring a Pike to a Gunfight

Apparently the AI difficulty settings work the same way in AoE 3 they did in the original.  Higher difficulty? ZERGLING RUSH.

Except the zerglings have guns and cannon and I have pikes.

A eulogy told in screenshots after the jump

Age of Empires 3: Slog Slog Slog. Also Pirates

I was kind of concerned about starting Age of Empire 3.  I picked it up on sale forever ago, but never actually installed it.  It's got some refreshing new mechanics, though, plus the introduction of hero units.  Hero units, incidentally, aren't all that useful.  As the screenshots (yay screenshots!) will attest, heroes spend an awful lot of time dead.

Also, its a slog-fest.  Hour-long introductory scenarios are not a good thing.

Scenario 1: Hold of Jannissaries and cannon until reinforcements arrive.

They have guns.  I have crossbows.  Shit

"Every moment I live... is agony."  Every hero says this, every time they die.   It's like a little mantra.

In any case, my valiantly dead Scottish knight Morgan Black holds off the Ottomans until his Swiss buddies show up.  Victory!

Insert REALLY BAD cutscene here.  Yes, Ensemble, you've moved to 3D models.  We get it!  This is not the generation for in-engine cutscenes, I promise.  Please stop.

DirectDraw Screenshots

Because I promised:

This is what my screenies look like in AoE 1 and 2.   Actually, the attempts from 1 weren't even this good.  Oh well, done with those anyway.

Joan of Arc: A unlikely martyr

...

...

Stereotyping from hell here.  Apparently French soldiers are either whiny cowards who have bad accents, or whiny idiots who need an uneducated peasant to be their savior.

...With bad accents.

Or both.

Yay escort missions.  Get Joan over there. Hoo-rah.

I have no idea how that might sound in AoE French.

Also, apparently two knights with an entourage of footmen and archers are helpless travelers and easy pray for French highwayman.  Are people stupid?

Speaking of stupid, Joan is too stupid to actually get into the damn boat.  The French end up losing the Hundred Years' War, as Burgundian assassins cut down Joan as she shambled toward the boat waiting to take her to safety.

I'll definitely be picking this back up later, as it really is a joy to play (unlike its predecessor).   Now, off to a new age, and a new world, in Age of Empires 3.

Age of Empires 2: Part 1

I actually finished a tutorial!

The Scottish resistance against Longshanks' invasion was a resounding success, thanks to Heavy Cavalry and Trebuchets.  Wait, what?  um... nevermind.  No, there isn't going to be any more detail than that, because wrath of ye gods the intro campaign is boring.

I must admit I was kind of dreading AoE 2 after the fiasco that was my playthrough of the first game.  However, its been so long since I've played this that I'd forgotten how big the gap is between the two games.  For example, units that will actually attack enemies on their own!  And production queues!  And Gates!  Win!

Etc etc, so on and so forth.  Now on to France, where I get to watch a "young peasant girl" save France from the Evil English.

....I finished a tutorial!

The End of the Age of Empires

I didn't even manage to finish the tutorial.  Wait, I mean "Learning Campaign."

Largely because I'd forgotten that at the time Age of Empires was developed, increasing the difficulty in an RTS meant giving the AI teams starting tech and military advantages rather than improving behavior.

Within the first thirty seconds of starting the last scenario in the Egypt campaign, I was attacked by an army of 4 Hoplites, 2 archers, and 2 Scout Ships.  I had built a scout cavalry in that timeframe.

There really was no contest.

I managed to sneak a villager away from the carnage, but he didn't have enough wood to build anything.

Off to AoE 2 now....

Age of Empires: A Text Adventure, Part 1

Because of the (apparently) infamous DirectDraw conflict in Windows 7 and 7-era legacy support, I had to dig out an old XP laptop to play Age of Empires.  Unfortunately, the output of screenshots on that machine is a black screen with a couple of graphical artifacts,  so our journey though AoE is going to be a text adventure.  (If anyone knows how to get AoE running on a 7 machine, let me know and I will move my files and produce screenshots).

The introduction campaign follows the rise of Egypt.  The first two missions are eye-stabbingly dull.  Get food to recruit villagers.  Now do it again!  (Avoid the alligators in the meantime).

It's on the third mission that things start to get interesting.  I have to find the discoveries (which appear to be neolithic equine carvings) before the bad guys do.

The Libyans have mounted scouts.  I have villagers armed with hunting spears.  So when a single scout attacks my village, I very nearly die.  A single injured villager survives the massacre to carry on.  After I stabilize and rebuild, I send out an intrepid explorer to find the discoveries.

He gets eaten by an angry lion.  :(

His buddy (Intrepid Explorer II), manages to discover the last discovery.

Mission four starts us in the same area, so I'm going to assume that Intrepid Explorer II is still around.  He goes lion hunting and avenges his friend.  In the meantime, I need to stockiple enough food to progress to the tool age.  On this map, that means elephant hunting.  Two villagers, including Intrepid Explorer II, get gored, but the hunting party brings down the villager.  We are victorious!  Eventually.

In mission 5, I have a small army and no village.  The pharaoh has asked me to eliminate a Libyan raiding party.  Bob the axeman and Ramses the archer both died, but all the Libyans were killed.  Stay off my land!  I won't see them again.

Mission Six was very nearly a loss.  The pharaoh directed me to stockpile 800 food and take control of a ruin.  He didn't tell me not to piss off the neighbors.  My axemen wandered through their village and led them right home before getting slaughtered.   I got up to 800 food and managed to sneak a villager over to the ruin just as the main attack started.

Long but simple pretty well defines mission seven.  Kill everyone! Except the Canaanites.  Get 1000 Gold!  By trading with the Canaanites?  Got that?  Good, go watch your people run around for half an hour.

In mission 8 "Crusade,"  I'm supposed to take one of these new priests (I love the conversion mechanic, by the way) and convert a ballista (what?).  Almost immediately my village is attacked by the ballista and a swarm of archers.  Fortunately, I had managed to build a pair of improved composite archers, who are apparently invincible.

The ballista made a beeline for my priest, but was converted before it managed to make the kill.  Effortless win!.

That's all for now, folks.  I'm pretty sure I'm nearly done with the Egyptian campaign, so it'll be on to the real stuff from there.  I'm open to any ideas regarding getting AoE to work on 7, or getting screenshots to work in XP.

AaAaAA!!! -- A reckless disregard for gravity

Well that was embarrassing.

This game is not all that complicated.  You jump off of buildings, "hug" and "kiss" other buildings on your way down, and deploy a personal fold-up gyroscope to land at the bottom.  There are lots of variant maps and levels on which to do this:

If you hit something sans fold-up gyroscope, you break all your bones and die.

Presumably, this should only happen at the bottom of the map, where you are supposed to land on things.

Not in my case, apparently.  As soon as I jumped in the third tutorial level, I ran smack into the top of a building.

Can you hear the ambulance sirens?

Yup, I'm dead and I didn't even finish the tutorial.  What I did play was somewhat entertaining, though.

Now off to the first of the inevitable RTS slogs:  Age of Empires.

At least I probably won't lose any of these right away.

A.R.E.S. Extiction Agenda

This Megaman-like is a lot of fun, although the control scheme definitely favors a game pad.  Perhaps I should have used one, but I went for the mouse and keyboard instead.

I started out with a laser gun.  PEW PEW

Upgradeable weapons and the ability to make items out of drops are a neat twist.  The initial enemies don't provide much of a challenge.  They're slow and stupid, and die in a few hits from even my puny lvl 1 laser cannon.  Platforming provides the usual thrill and challenges, as long as I manage not to fall on anyone.  This isn't Mario, after all.

That looks suspiciously like a robo-Xenomorph...

The first miniboss wasn't too hard, but I took a few hits, and got lots of loot in exchange.  Moving along.

After an uneventful journey...

BOSS FIGHT!

That's a lot of turrets

My Super Special Valkyl Zypher Cannon fixes them.

Special move recharging, and the actual boss shows up.  Just like old times in Megaman, we have a hard hitting, high HP, slow, predictable behemoth.  I dispatch him handily.

I clearly need to work on my screenshot timing.  There were lots more explosions ingame

Speaking of explosions, I get a HE grenade. Cool!  I'm hurting pretty bad (kindly indicated by a sparking animation).  Fortunately level completion resets the health bar.

Level two starts off by handing me another grenade, EMP this time.  I can it use to freeze enemies and obstacles; and it somehow doesn't hurt me, even though I'm a robot.  Ok then.

A wild Robo-Xenomorph appears!  And this one has a gun too.

My new gun is blue, and shoots lasers really fast.  PEWPEWPEW.  I also have no health.

He took most of my health, but I took his gun, so I guess I win.

OOOooooh pretty, it's a "Laser SMG."  Let's upgrade it!

Well, that was stupid.  Now I have a better laser smg, but I can't afford to make any repair kits.  We're going to creep ahead very carefully now, and try to pick up enough drops to build one.

*nin nin nin*

I do pretty well until I come to one of the falling-block traps ubiquitous in the corner of the platformer genre.  A well-timed roll will get me through this!

Or not.  I'm in little robot pieces, and the (apparently) evil robot-controlling sentient gas gets to keeps its hostages.  Yeah, I'm confused too.

In any case, chalk up another fail.

Is next: More Basejumping!  I'm pretty sure you can die if you stick the landing wrong, too.

Mystery Game of the Week: 3D Ultra Minigolf

Hm.  I suck at minigolf in real life, so I can't imagine why I would want to play a video game version.   I have no idea where this game came from, but I certainly didn't buy it. 

ANYWAY.  I'm fairly certain you can't die or lose in a game this obviously kid-friendly, so I'm going to be arbitrary and set a fail state of completing 18 holes at more than 15 over par.  I'll lower it if that turns out to be too easy.  It probably won't, I really suck at mingolf.

Now, off to figure out if I can make it run....

Virtual PCs are a wonderful thing.  It runs just fine in XP Mode.

And, I do indeed suck.

I'm at +4 on the FIRST HOLE. Pathetic.

....and starting Hole 5 I'm at +10.

FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Turns out that gap to the left of the blade is a myth.  I finished this hole at +15.  I have to be at par or better on the next hole to not fail this game...

And we're done here.  I got stuck under the damn catapult attacking the Fairy's castle  (which I unfortunately didn't get a screenshot of).

In any case, I have objective proof I am terrible at minigolf.  Maybe my wife will stop trying to get me to play now.

Wishful thinking?

(Also, it's really difficult to make a post about minigolf sound remotely interesting.  I'm sorry.)

Loser Friendly: 1...2...3...Kick it! (Drop that Beat Like an Ugly Baby)

After a couple of complete playthroughs, both while listening to a lovely remix of "Still Alive," I've determined not only is there no way to die, but there's no way to even LOSE.  I suppose you could try to get a score of zero, but that's more work than actually trying to succeed.

Thus, EXCLUDED. 

Moving on now...

The Ironman Classic Experiment. Wait, what?

Over the past several months, when I could tear myself away from playing XCOM and Xenoblade, I've been struggling with how to decide what to play next.  So many games, so little time, so little money, and so on.

Then Rock Paper Shotgun linked me to Ninth Life.  They describe themselves thusly:

Three friends attempt to complete each game in their entire PC games catalogue in alphabetical order, with only one life per game. Which games will they clock? Which will they fail miserably? Which ones will even install after all these years? One chance, one life, no mistakes.

It couldn't be more perfect.  Can't decide what to play?  Play ALL TEH GAMEZ!  And XCOM has taught me the nail-biting wonder of Ironman Classic, so applying that to every game couldn't be anything but fun, right?

Of course!

So I've spent the past couple of weekends digitizing my PC library and getting a catalog in order.  It's all prepped and ready to go.

...and my first game is "1...2...3...Kick it! (Drop that Beat Like an Ugly Baby)."  How is that even a game title?  Thank you, Steam, for whatever sale or bundle you included that in.

Now I have to go figure out how to die in an experimental music/rhythm/basejumping gamething.  I'll keep you posted.