State of My Games (2021/01/24)

 What has happened in my gaming? 

Have to give up on Vector Thrust (again). I was reminded why I didn't play the game that long: it won't recognize my bone standard Xbox 360 controller (wireless). And playing on a keyboard is a no-no. 

I'm at the point in Warstone TD I'm trying to come up with Mithril, but you only get those as mission rewards, and I ran out of missions to play as I don't play online. So that's that.  There are DLCs, but I don't feel like playing those at the moment.  

Played Trailmakers to the end, got enough to make the spaceship and left the planet. Did record a video of me trying to get 2-3 more items mainly as a demo. It's on my Youtube channel already and should be on my Steam feed soon. I do recommend it. 

Tried Duskers. This is one of those games I probably will never finish due to it just being... extremely hard, but extremely atmospheric. Basically, you woke from your cryogenic sleep to find you alone in the universe... every space ship or space depot you find was derelict or abandoned, no one alive anywhere, just a bunch old patrol bots, turrets, and nasties like the swarm, leapers, or the slime. All you have are a couple drones: you can remote control them, or you can issue them simple orders via the remote interface. But video feed could fail. Their equipment can malfunction. And your drones cannot fight the enemy. Best you can do is to contain them by locking them in other rooms. But your motion sensor may give inconclusive results. Should you take the chance? Can you live with the consequences? What happened to the universe? Will you be able to find out before your equipment fail? Or will you find another ship before yours fail altogether? 

Tried Forged Battalion, which is like Command & Conquer albeit on steroids. The plot is your typical underdog vs oppressive regime. The graphics are nice, but not spectacular. The main trick here is the extensive tech tree and the ability to customize your units based on the tech tree you unlock. Unlock treads instead of wheels? Your chassis got heavier and you get more armor and thus more HP. Unlock heavy barrel? Now you can equip your units with armor piercing (AP) rounds. Unlock armor? Make armored versions of your units. Combine the upgrades, but keep in mind your economy is still fixed and these new units would be more expensive and take longer to produce. Otherwise, this is still the same: make more units and crush the enemy base real-time strategy (RTS) game where you need to build the right number of structures to power your factories, produce the units, and so on. The fixed scenarios have pretty big maps and each has a twist or two. On the third mission you're already fighting against TWO enemies AND protecting an installation. And there are like 15 missions. Due to differences in tech tree things be hectic. I am not sure I want to play all 15 missions, as I know what the game's about now. 

Trying RAM pressure, which is a game in the style of XCOM, but with a global server so it's closer in spirit to MMO's like The Division, but it's still turn-based tactical combat. Alien ship and fragments have landed on Earth, and you, as a mercenary unit working for (US, Russia, or China) will attempt to wipe out anyone at the landing site and secure it for your side. Other mercs are doing the same. So you may be against generic PvE (play vs environment) enemies, or you may be facing other players in a much tougher fight. You may even be fighting the aliens too. Use the money you earned to upgrade your equipment and HQ, assign skills and perks to your operators, hire new operators as necessary to round out your team, and advance the plot: are there survivors? Can first contact be made peacefully? Or was all this just a warning of things to come?  Early access game is free, but you can support the devs by "buying" additional equipment in the game with real money. 

Right now, my reaction is a bit mixed. I'll put it in a different post. 

Some thoughts about Tower Defense Game Genre, and how MarZ could have been better

I would not say I am a tower defense game guru, but I can hold my own generally unless the game expects me to somehow figure out a tactic no one ever hinted at me before. I can perform a deep dive when I had to, and I did so for the game Defense Grid. 

If I play in easy mode, I don't expect to breeze through EVERY mission, but I don't expect to repeat the third mission multiple times and getting no hint on why I am not succeeding. This points to a problem in game design... bad difficulty curve, lack of hint system, or expecting the player to read the minds of the mission makers. And as it turned out, it was one of two major flaws in MarZ. 

So I decided to look for some help. After watching someone who aced the mission (no casualties, no damage to lander), he did it by fighting one or two fronts at a time, NOT mining resources if not needed. In other words, he's very quick in selling off his towers (or even refinery) to concentrate on a different front. You need the 100% refund perk to make this work though. Normal sell price is a 20% loss, and you need to continue mining to make up for that.  

This is where I also noticed I did NOT pick my perks... or used my slo-mo, and pause button. But really, how was I supposed to notice? If they want us to pick a perk, they should just tell us. And also with the "sell everything and rebuild it in a different direction". This could have been easily fixed by adding a few bits of scripted dialog between the levels, like "they are coming from the northeast!" and "Commander, sell off the towers and rebuild them to the northeast!" and so on. 

You can even make it reactive. If you hadn't rebuild the towers, make the dialog go "Commander! Build the towers toward the northeast! Hurry! Sell off the existing towers if you have to! You have the perk! Use it!"  Though I guess the perk doesn't fit into "reality". 

Which brings us to the other problem of MarZ... lack of alternate strategies and/or tactics. 

Most tower defenses ended up being "puzzles" instead of wargames... Albeit with very flexible solutions. You can often achieve the same results with a variety of mix of towers, depending on your specific tower defense genre: fixed path, or grid-based. Fixed-path TD basically have you spam the path with as many towers as possible, or if you can't make the towers as powerful as possible. Grid-based TD lets you force the enemy into longer runs so they have to go past your towers multiple times and get hit multiple times. 

MarZ, by limiting the number of overall towers available (through the use of "hubs"), rather than let resources be the overall limit of towers, basically limited the number of overall solutions available, since there are only 2 upgrade levels (the third one, "specialization", what I call the "plus upgrade", adds very little and is only useful for uber swarms near endgame and only for certain towers, and since tower damage doesn't happen that often, having a repair drone just automates repairs, not enhance combat power). Given that there only are like 5 towers in the game, that's a bit limited. 

MG -- your regular gun tower, the upgrade adds more guns for heavier enemies. Plus upgrade turns the triple cannon into a Gatling gun for super zombie gibbing action. No minimum range. 

Rocket  -- explosive warhead, proximity kills, the upgrade adds additional shots before reload. Plus upgrade adds a mortar for light damage at long range. Has a minimum range. 

Laser -- long-range focus on a single enemy, the upgrade adds more power and range. Plus upgrade adds prism, basically cascades onto multiple enemies for slightly less damage, but makes more kills. Has a minimum range.  

Tesla -- slows enemies down, and pops tesla bubbles, the upgrade adds range and damage. Plus upgrade adds teleporter: sends one enemy back out of range. No minimum range.  

Drone -- sends drones out to engage any enemies, usually one at a time. Upgrade adds drones to the swarm, and each does more damage. Plus upgrade adds minefields. No minimum range. 

IMHO, the plus upgrades (or as the game designers call them, "specializations") are not all worth it. The only ones that are truly worth it, IMHO, would be laser, and drone. Tesla's upgrade, teleport, doesn't seem to work on bosses or minibosses, and you'd never want it to be this near anyway. Rocket's upgrade, mortar, doesn't fire often enough to be useful and is often landing in the wrong spot for faster enemies, IMHO. MG's minigun upgrade seems to be a bit too little too late. My credits and tower slot can be better used by one of the other weapons with more range or damage. 

When there are "obvious" choices in terms of tactics, tower mix, upgrades, and so on, the design is not as balanced as it could be. 

Let us compare it to two pretty classic tower defense games: FieldRunners, and Warstone TD. 

Fieldrunners is a grid-based TD with no tower limit. It only has four towers: gun, goo/ice, missile, tesla/laser. But there is no limit on the number of towers you can build, and it's a "build a rat maze" type tower defense game. So you can have a lot of different combinations and path designs. The extended mode adds two more tower types, but still the same game. 

Warstone TD has 5 unit types, But you are limited to how many units you can deploy limited to the number of "warstones" you own (and thus can plop down next to enemy's path). You only have 5 units types, but 2 of the units can have different upgrades: peasant > mercenary > knight / witcher > knight templar / inquisitor; and archer > amazon > shieldmaiden / assassin > valkyrie / ninja. So depending on how you upgrade your units, they can do very different things to enemy units. Thus, the tactics will be different depending on your upgrade path, even if you can only place so many units on screen. 

MarZ has limited number of towers, AND limited tower choices (with no specialization like Warstone), not path choices like Fieldrunners. So the tactics you can deploy is limited: just build up max towers you can build and max upgrade, and that's about it. No wonder it feels so... limiting. 

State of My Games: January 5th, 2021

No change from previous update, still playing MarZ, as it takes an hour or two to play each mission properly. 

Mission 15 is kicking my arse as the landslide keeps catching my soldiers, despite what I thought was enough time to evac. 

So instead, today will be about games I've found that look interesting, or have rediscovered that I actually have keys to (with over 1300 games on Steam, and more keys every month from Humble Bundle and Fanatical, there are many games I did not redeem... yet) 

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NOTE: These I have NOT played yet, but want to get into. Actually there are dozens of games I want to try, but never seem to find enough time. 

Ram Pressure -- Imagine a game similar to XCOM the original in scope, but with graphics engine of the remake... and multiplayer. Meteors rained down on Earth, many of them alien ships or fragments thereof. Rather than panicking the population, the government instead contracted various mercenary outfits to scout and acquire the alien sites... and eliminate witnesses. You are the commander of one of the mercenary outfits. Your job is to secure the site, first-contact any survivors if they are friendly (but shoot them dead if they are hostile), secure any alien technology, intelligence, or weapons, against all comers... and aliens themselves. You may be facing other mercenaries... or something even more sinister. And you may have to make a moral choice, once the veil has been lifted. Twelve classes of soldiers, ten categories of weapons, procedurally generated deformable terrain (blow down the wall for the sniper to shoot in)... This can be interesting, but initial feedback isn't that great. Worth a try? 

Warstone TD -- tower defense with a mix of strategy, RPG, and city building, help people raise an army and defeat the evil chieftain bent on world domination, explore the land, contact allies, etc. Cute comic art style, Actually quite old. 

Greed Corp -- turn-based strategy that require you to keep a balance between max exploitation of the land (and causing environmental disasters)... or fall behind on your production and research and be conquered by your rivals. Have up to 4 players (3 of which can be AI or online), across 3 dozen maps, and separate single player campaign, 4 separate factions... Overharvesting of resources results in total collapse of terrain, which can be used as a strategy... or just scorched earth denial. How would you battle your enemies? 

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Previously Played...

Choplifter HD -- the original choplifter on the 8-bit computers was a revelation on how even a simple game can be amazing and fun. This version is a remake, and while it kept most of the same mechanics, and used a modern graphics engine, it also tried to go a bit far by making a lot of the helos DLCs (for extra $$$$) and some bits of it a bit too hard, as you have fuel for boost, weapons to shoot, rockets to blast... even as you try to survive against all sorts of threats. They even added zombies to some levels. 

Her Story -- you are given access to various interviews by police questioning a British woman about the disappearance of her husband. By entering keywords, you can find additional relevant footage. Can you piece together her story... and why you are there? 

Driver San Francisco -- Tanner had finally arrested Jericho, crime kingpin, at the end of Driv3r in San Francisco, and Tanner, along with his partner Jones, was going to escort the prison convoy to the courthouse. But on the way, Jericho somehow escaped and took over the prison van, Tanner gave chase, but soon the table was turned, and Tanner ended up in a serious collision and fell into a coma... Then suddenly, he found himself driving with Jones, and gained the ability to shift to other drivers... Can he locate Jericho this way? Then what? What were Jericho's plans? 

NOTE: The game "went out of print" in 2016, even from Ubisoft's own store, probably due to license issues. 

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Will continue to play MarZ to the end. 

State of My Games: New Year's Eve Edition

(This used to be called PC Games I'm Playing, but I figure this sounds better)

Currently playing MarZ, Trident's Wake, and Train Mechanic Simulator (2017). 

MarZ: Tactical Base Defense has a somewhat new concept... Zombies on Mars! Apparently they were the victims of an older Soviet secret experiment in the 1960's! Now that humans have landed on Mars, the zombies are coming back out for blood! You are limited in the way your base is setup, as your central base can only support so many "hubs", and each hub can only support so many structures which includes mines and turrets. And you will have to ugpradea  LOT to survive. What's really intriguing is the level editor though. I've just finished level 3 after having to learn a new tactic. I'll give it another run in an hour or so. 

Trident's Wake is an isometric shooter where you try to reconquer humanity's last hope, the Trident, after the Phage took over Earth, yet when Trident launched, it was immediately hijacked by other aliens. Now, the Sentinel, bot bodies inhabited by digitized beings known as ECHOs, must team up and form strike teams to retake the Trident, bit by bit, and retake the ship, or Humanity would be ended. In practice, the shooter, is extremely stingy on ammo, and is designed as a 4p coop shooter, with NO bot support. The weapons don't seem to match the type of enemies we're fighting, and all in all just feels clunky, the sentinels don't feel that different, If you have a group, it may be worth trying. But there are better shooters out there. Not recommended. 

Train Mechanic Simulator 2017 is from PlayWay, the folks who had previously brought all the other mechanic sims like car mechanic, plane mechanic, even tank mechanic. You repair trains, diesel, electric, or steam, with plenty of different parts to dismantle and reinstall. What's different here: you also get to go out into the world and basically play in someone's model train setup, where you have to drive around and look for disabled train, sometimes even off the track, which you have to retrieve with your crane and put back on the track, and take it back to the right depot (one each for diesel, steam, and electric) so you can conduct repairs. The interface is both strange and familiar. The standard way of using "rust" or "dirt" to represent a damage part is here, but was a bit too subtle to be instantly recognizable. And it's obvious this is a set, not a real-world, since none of the pieces aside from the player's train actually ever move, and the time never changes. And tracks have elevation changes that would never exist on a real train track. It can only be a model train set, but it is still fun! Recommended. 

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Other games I've played in the past

Battletech (with all three DLCs, and at least one mod) -- the best Battletech experience so far. It's not perfect, but it's intriguing nonetheless. Build up your mercenary team after the entire planet was betrayed, and participate in the reconquest, while being employed by anyone and everyone... if you care to accept their contract... yes, even pirates. But don't burn your bridges... You may need access to black market later... Add random events like flashpoints, crew decisions, and plenty of battles against enemies plus occasional surprises, and dozens of mechs of all classes, including the ECM platform Raven, and more, and each mech can be customized with weapons and armor to fit your mechwarrior's fighting style, even as you take damage and crew get killed or wounded in battle, the company must go on... Highly recommended if you like turn-based tactical combat. 

Unheard -- a very interesting audio detective game where you need to solve a case and a new technology was able to reconstruct sound from ANYWHERE within the structure, so you can listen to everybody's dialog. But are they lying, or telling the truth? And there are several different cases, from sabotage to bombing. The game was originally NOT in English, but the sound talent is excellent. I haven't finished all the cases yet, and I really need to get back to it.  There's a free extra case, and some extra Chinese content available as well. 

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (no longer on Steam?) A VERY pretty turn and turn aerial combat game with a TON of aircraft available, with a storyline by a well-known technothriller author, this is NOT a sim by any means, but it is VERY pretty and loads of fun to play, if a little frustrating at first. 

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Will probably continue with MarZ, Train Mechanic, and probably go back to Unheard, then starton Detective Di.