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By Michael Charge, 09/07/2010 6:00 am

Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
Year of Release: 2010 (Wii, iPhone and iPad versions not currently released as of 09/07/10)
Platforms: PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Wii 

When you look at developers claiming to be doing episodic gaming, only one has really got the idea properly – Telltale. From the great Sam and Max games to the recent Tales of Monkey Island, they know how to make good games in a series every month which will keep you holding on to your mouse until the very end of the series through a series of very clever yet not impossible puzzles and witty dialogue. Now they are trying to bring more of the TV terminology over to gaming through their Pilot system – trying out some new series by releasing the first episode and gauging the result. The first up is Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent.

Entitled the “Mystery of Scoggins” it takes Nelson Tethers, the only member of the FBI Puzzle Research Division, to the town of Scoggins in Minnesota to investigate an incident involving the eraser factory that makes those used by President. Once there however it turns out that everything is not how it seems, especially with the appearance of some creepy little red gnomes. The plotline is a little bit formulaic and in the vein of things like Twin Peaks or Alan Wake but on a slightly less sinister note though still remaining occasionally scary. I quite liked the plot but it is very obvious a pilot with quite a few questions left unanswered at the end. Though it is a bit weird how everyone in town always gives you puzzles.

Puzzle Agent plays a lot like the Professor Layton – to advance the plot, you need to complete several puzzles. There are several different types, from riddles to jigsaw and they all are both challenging and fun. Some of them are repeated a few time but at varying levels of complexity such as the one based around reflecting something’s path via a selection of logs or such like.. To help you out there is a hint system which you can use a maximum of three times per puzzle in order to provide steadily more useful hints. However, the use of this (along with submitting incorrect answers) brings down your final score. This has no real effect but it does make you want to go back to improve your score and so keep playing.

The main draw for me in this game though is the rather striking art done by Graham Annable. For anyone unfamiliar with him, he is a traditional animator/artist who actually helped to form Telltale in the first place. He has a very distinctive art style and humour which can be seen in his video on his youtube page. As you can see its all about being creepy or surreal. The game’s 3D artists took his line drawings and added a 3D effect on most of the scenes to make them look even better. I agree with the reviews that say this feels like an animated short. I also think its one of Telltale’s best looking games so far. Similarly, the sound design is also pretty good. The music is perfect for the game’s tone and the voice work, while slightly amateurish, perfectly suits the slightly mad inhabitants of this backwater.

When I came away from Puzzle Agent, it was with one feeling – I want more of this. Puzzle Agent really grabbed me with a mixture of the art style and the cunning puzzles. I hope that this becomes Telltale’s next series. But in regards to this episode, don’t play through the game first time with a guide as it it much more satisfying than just skipping over them all. Take your time and enjoy it properly. Oh and you’ll never look at flashes of red in the forest the same way ever again. Or sleep.

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By Michael Charge, 08/07/2010 6:00 am

Publisher: Blendo Games
Developer: Blendo Games
Year of Release: 2010
Platforms: PC, XBLIG (Xbox Live Indie Games)

My fleet has been travelling through space for two months now when we stumbled on a ship full of Rastafarians fleeing the police. I had a choice – do I help them to flee or hand them in? I obviously chose to help them. Why?

Because these weren’t any Rastafarians fleeing the police. This was a ship of Rastafarian cats, complete with fancy multi-coloured hats.

The setup of Flotilla is very simple – your space captain has been given seven months to live. He goes out on one final journey aiming to travel as far as possible before his time is up.

Each planet has something special about it. It can effectively be one of two things. The first is like the Rastafarian cats. It is a simple choose-your-own-adventure style thing where your decisions lead to a story. You might become karaoke champion of the universe , invent your own cocktail, trade your eye for a fancy bit of space gear or simply stare into the abyss. There are loads of different events like this and they are all really funny or just bizarre as they quite often satire the most common trope of science fiction.

The other type is when someone else is simply a dick and decides to attack you. This then switches over to a turn based combat mode.  The first thing to note is that because your in space there is no ground – the map is entirely in 3D with the player controlling both the planar and vertical motion along with facing as well. This mean you have to concentrate on finding the best way to get into your enemies weak spot by using the advantage of height and flanking. Most of the enemy ships reflect damage at the front and on top, so your ships must frantically get underneath or behind an opponent in order to blow it to pieces and send those Space Deer into the cold vacuum. However, some ship weapons (mainly the close quarter beam weapons) can get through all the armour at certain ranges.

Between battles you can also upgrade your ships with extra parts in order to gain an edge. However this cargo can occasionally be stolen off you by various events or you can trade it for better options. Additionally, some other events can grant you other ships than your standard missile armed destroyer – these range from the close quarter beam gunships up to the dreadnaughts which laugh in the face of adversity. However due to the time limit, it is very rare you will end up being overwhelmed by controlling a massive fleet which is a little bit of a shame

The main campaign is designed to be played over and over again. It numbers each of your adventures and also assigns a score at the end based on your actions and your remaining ships so it turns into a constant score improving adventure. To make it even better you can also play the campaign in splitscreen co-op by using an Xbox 360 controller, with each player controlling one half of  the fleet. It makes it fun just to suddenly decide the choices in campaign mode before switching to fancy tactics and manoeuvres in the battle mode. It makes the game even better as the simple but deep gameplay make it easy to pick up – I’ve had a few games with my Dad which he picked up almost instantly and had a great time.

There is also a two player skirmish mode, allowing you to either go up against the AI or a splitscreen partner with a variety of different ships, from the dreadnaught down to the mini car shaped fighter plane. It is a quite fun mode but it does lack the humour of the campaign.

The graphics for Flotilla are nice and simplistic -  the ships are simply shapes hanging in space in a single colour. Space itself is a pleasing orange colour, dotted with simplistic ship wreckage and asteroids. Even the main menu is simplistic. In the campaign, the drawings of the various is very stylistic with some really funny ones of some of the better events. However the best part of the presentation is the music. In battle, your actions are accompanied to Chopin’s piano music making each one haunting to play through. There are also some really funny sound effects as well from the karaoke soundtrack of that event to the joyful celebration after you down a ship. It is such good fun that you can’t help but feel happy when you play it.

Flotilla is a very simple, very fun game from a studio of indie devs who make really stylistically fun games. It is cheap but offers endless replayability and a constant impulsive desire to play one more quick adventure. It is also great to play over a lunchbreak as each adventure takes a maximum of 20 minutes. For its price, pick it up.

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By Michael Charge, 07/07/2010 6:00 am

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Creative Assembly
Year of Release: 2010
Platforms: PC

The Total War games don’t appeal to everyone. I understand why – there are so many factors in the games that it can be a bit worrying to play one for the first time. However, if you feel like that then Napoloen Total War is in fact the perfect introduction to the series, with smaller campaigns and a simpler selection of units to choose from. However, it also presents a whole new set of challenges for the Total War veterans and it has an improved engine.

As you can tell by the name, Napoleon Total War is set during the Napoleonic War where the man from Corsica decided to get imperial ambitions and try to take over Europe. As part of this, you play through four of his campaigns from the early years in France, through Italy and the Middle East before finishing in Europe. The campaigns are all really short apart the European one, so it takes up a less time than any other campaigns in the other Total War games. This mainly due to the victory conditions which require the capture of a certain region in a certain number of turns. It is kind of against the usual method of taking your time to carefully advance – instead you have to charge straight through the lines of the enemy and get to the target as soon as possible.  The European Campaign is probably the closest to the the Grand Campaigns of the other games. This time round it is over a shorter time period but each turn is two weeks as opposed to six months in Empire. This does also mean that most units will take around six turns to make as opposed to one or two you get used to if you conquered Europe in the last game. It does slightly require you to think more turns ahead then usual.

On the campaign map there a few changes. The first is the removal of the priest agent which makes sense as there is no real need to convert the population. There has also been some changes to the town system. There are now different types of towns that can only be home to a certain type of building, which can be switched between via a button press and some time as opposed to the lengthy procedure of deleting one tree before going up the other. Also, there are no longer the other theatres of war that were introduced in Empire but there are trade areas to represent theses money caches. Another addition is attrition. If units spend time in mountainous areas or in the snows of winter, they will start to bleed off troops unless they are in range of . This stops big stacks of units charging into Russia without a care in the world while also representing the main factor in Napoleon’s defeat. Overall the campaign has fewer annoyances than the Empire due in part to the smaller size and it feels a lot faster to play.

The battle system is now a lot faster as well. Firefights between units seem to last for less time as units don’t fire by rank but in a single mass leading to each battle being more devastating. Apart from this, the units and tactics remain the same – line infantry is the main part of your force while skirmishers and cannon cause most of the damage and your cavalry finish them off. Many of the tactics remain the same. One key difference is in your generals. Now you can see a general’s command radius which is the area where his rally ability affect as opposed to over the entire map. To make up for this, the general can now Inspire one unit at a time which grants them an increase in their strength so its perfect for when you are about to send a unit into the breach of a fort. As well as the land battles, the naval side returns with some new units such as the huge ironclad steam ships that blow smaller vessels to pieces.

Apart from the French campaigns there are also a series of historical battles. These focus on the bigger ones such as Austerlitz, Ulm and Waterloo. Each battle sets you up in the historical position and gives you an objective to complete. There are one or two which are not so good but the rest are the perfect challenge for anyone who reckons that they are a Total War king. They can be replayed at different difficulty levels. But of course the French can’t have all the fun so there is the Campaign of the Coalitions. This allows you to play as the British, the Spanish, the Austrians or the Russians during the time period of the French European Campaign and attempt to throw a spanner in the works for Napoleon. These campaigns are slightly more about juggling the diplomatic side, especially as the British who have to carefully manage the formation of the coalition while trying to defend against the Spanish at Gibraltar.

Multiplayer for Napoleon is still as fun as it was in Empire even though it does have a slightly smaller unit selection in all the battle modes. It also seems to be slightly more stable than it was in Empire with less lag. Additionally all of the campaigns are playable in two player online co-op as any of the sides so if you want to fight the French in Italy or Egypt you can only do it via this mode.

Napoleon is a huge technical improvement over Empire. At the same point after release, Napoleon is much more stable that Empire ever was and still runs better. It also looks much nicer as well from the fog covered battles up to the explosions as the artillery goes off leaving shell craters. The level of randomisation in the characters has improved even more through subtle details above and beyond the usual different faces trick. Again the sound is phenomenal with loads of care taken of the sounds of battle. The only fly in the ointment is the voice actor for Napoleon whose French accent is rather annoying. As with the first game, it is approximately 15GB in disk space and requires the use of Steam.

The game so far has had three pieces of DLC, unfortunately not including all the pre-order bonuses. The first was a free piece which added some more units to the French Imperial Guard but more importantly also added in the Battle of Waterloo from the British side. The second pack added the Battle of Friedland as well as some more units to the Coalition from some heavy cavalry to the Coldstream Guard. The latest and largest pack is a new campaign focusing on the events in Iberia with you aiming to keep hold on Spain as the French or trying to push them out as Spain or Britain. This adds some newer units including the guerrillas. Theses are Spanish units of skirmishers or light cavalry who can deploy almost anywhere on the field, providing a huge tactical advantage. You also gain agents designed to swing the local politics towards you faction while also slowing your opponents. It is an excellant addition which plays the same but differently.

Napoleon is the slickest Total War yet with several campaigns and battles which provide hours of gameplay. It is also the best looking so far and is well worth a play if you are a fan of the series. If your not a fan, then Napoleon is the best to get introduced to due to the campaign feeling as through their are designed as extended tutorials. The only real issues is that it is slightly too close to Empire so the differences can be obvious and jarring. However, what other game allows you to jump into Napoleon’s boots and still look this good.

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By Michael Charge, 06/07/2010 6:00 am

(This review was my first for geeks.co.uk and was published exactly one year ago today. This is the original with some additional new comments below the line on what has changed since release)

Publisher: EA
Developer: DICE
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC

Everyone likes free stuff. More people like free stuff that’s useful, and even more people than that like getting stuff that you should be paying for, for free. Koreans especially.

In Korea, most games are not sold in stores, but are downloaded for free and then kept alive by microtransactions, often for items that can be done without. This system hasn’t work particularly well in the west,  probably because we are all a bunch of traditionalists but also because we expect a lot more from our games.

This situation, however, is going to change and EA must be able to smell the money making opportunity. They plan to release a Need for Speed game next year using this payment model, but in June they released a game that has been a long time coming: Battlefield Heroes.

Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon style shooter using the battlefield system from other games in the series (such as Battlefield 2 or Bad Company). Compared to the other games though, it feels a lot simpler. There are only 3 classes on each side and most maps are small scale with no more than 4 flags. It feels more casual and silly. The art style is similar to TF2 and the camera is in the third person, but more important is the change to the class system.

As said before there are three classes on each side. However, unlike previous games where classes and sides would change from battle to battle, you choose your side and class when you create your hero. This is a persistent character, whose abilities and appearance are carried over between games. Each class (Commando, Soldier and Gunner) can use certain unique abilities. Many of these are skits on annoyances in other games (such as the soldiers’ grenade spam). This carries on the sense of humour running through the game. Various clothing options add to the comedy.  For Battlefunds, paid for with real hard cash, you can upgrade your character with either proper military attire, as a participant in the eternal “Pirate vs Ninja” war or in other humorous clothing like an “I’m with stupid shirt”.

The main problem with the clothing options is the fact they cost money.  Worse, the payed stuff has a limited life on it and the free original options are rubbish. This was a problem I also had in the beta version, which annoyed me enough to make me blog about it. Thankfully, EA has managed to fix it slightly. Some clothing options can be bought with Valor Points which are earned ingame and can now be bought permanently for a premium.  It does make the game look a lot better; the craziness of the clothing just adds to the overall bedlam.

And bedlam it is. In the last game, I saw a man in a sombrero knock a jeep into the air by clapping his hands, before waving to the jeep he’d just crashed. I saw a spitfire with a sniper and a gunner riding on the wings with all three doing chicken noises. The game is just fun to play, in a way COD or even BF2 just can’t be. The feel from it is just one of happy mayhem.

Still, there are some problems. There are only four maps at the moment, which is typical for a free game. Also there is a slight imbalance between the two sides. It seems to be much easier to join a game as a National (fake German look-alike) than as a Royal (fake British trooper…with Kilt!). Not much of an issue as there are still plenty of players now, but after people lose interest it might be much harder to find games at your level. Finally, the number of items in the store is somewhat lacking. At the moment there are too few items for some sections and many of them are not actually very useful.

But, this is a free game, and it seems to be something that EA is more than happy to put money into so we can expect development to last for a long time with the promise of new items and maps down the line. At the moment the game is still great. It’s a free version of Battlefield which is fun to play and can be quite addictive due to its persistent character system. And it’s free. Did I mention that?

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So what is it like today? Well there have been a few major changes. The store has been filled up with items of varying prices from new costume parts to weapons to funny emotes to the new widgets such as rocket fuel or footballs. There have been several themed set, from ninjas to knights to characters from Battlefield Bad Company 2. In December of 2009, they changed the price system by devaluing Valour Points and limiting to buy time limited item while the Battle Funds had their worth increased by dropping the price in the real money and making them permanent. This was slightly controversial as many players saw it forcing players to spend real money on their game by cutting the usefulness of the free currency

In the actual game, there has also been a change. The number of National players compared to Royals has now flipped and there are a lot more of the fake Germans running around the maps. The number of maps has been increased up to seven and a new game mode, which is a king of the hill variant, has been added so the battles are now slightly more mixed up with a greater variety of both settings and tactics.

There are over 3 million players who have signed up for the game so it is still doing well. And why shouldn’t it be? Its the battlefield formula but for free. Even better most people are willing to pay for parts of it to keep it in constant development – by a month after release it had made $30 million dollars with each player spending on average $20. I think it has been a success both finically and as a game.

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By Michael Charge, 05/07/2010 7:00 am

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Creative Assembly
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC

Truth be told, I am a little bit on the slow side as a gamer. I like FPS games and racing, but sit me down with a long term RTS or a good old game of Civ and I will be happy and content until the cows come home or the map is painted my colouring depending on which comes first. Creative Assembly’s Total War series holds a pretty special place in my heart, not just for the exquisite blend of real time tactics and turn based strategy but for the great stories it tell as you paint the map your colour.

Empire is split into two parts. The first is the high level strategy map, not unlike a crazy game of risk. This time, your battlefield is three theatres of war – Europe, India and North America. You have to create your armies and navies and lead them to conquer the various territories while also masterminding the economic, technological and political side of everything aiming to achieve your objectives. In the Grand Campaign this can vary between capturing a certain number of  states or simply holding onto specific ones – for example the British have to hold on to Gibraltar as well as tramping through the Indian Subcontinent. These objectives help to mould the action and make it a little easier for the newer players to jump in and know what to do as opposed to more open games which can be quite hard for newbies to jump into. As well as this, there are also smaller missions that confer benefits – going back to the Brits, if they capture several territories such as Georgia and parts of Canada then the Thirteen Colonies will join the empire, boosting your number of territories and inching you closer to victory. These territories hold both cities and the smaller towns which all specialise in certain building trees such as factories or colleges.

As well as your armies and navies, you also have agents to help out with your cunning plans. First up is the gentleman who represent all the men of learning. Their primary role is advancing your research by sitting in your colleges and drinking tea but alternatively you can kit them out and focus them on calling your enemy characters curs before engaging them in a duel. So if you want to have Isaac Newton become Europe’s greatest dualist, you can! In a similar killing role, assassin’s return as the Rake. He can sneak behind enemy lines, killing agents and generals, sabotaging buildings or can protect your own characters from attack. The final agent is the priest who can spy on opponents while converting the local population to your religion. These men of the cloth are very useful in the New World, where the locals aren’t too happy about being ruled. These three groups are vital to success as they help to soften the enemy up before your armies rush in. They are not created like other units but instead are generated from certain buildings. This system adds some tension to using them as well as making them a valuable commodity.

Of course at any point your opposition may simply declare war and then your generals come into play. Generals gain traits and experience from battle to battle based entirely on their actions – a general who fights using primarily infantry will gain traits that make their line infantry much more effective. Obviously, this can make you wonder about risking your higher level generals in dangerous battles as if you loose one who has a high command rating it can be a major blow for any campaign. Luckily you don’t have to have units attached to a general at all times like in previous Total War games (in Medieval units under a captain could change sides very easily). Its also easier to muster an army under a new general as they can recruit from the field rather than having to go back to a city to pick up new troops. Overall, it is a lot easier and much smoother experience to wage war.

The second part is the real time tactics battles which have had a massive change due to the introduction of massed firearms. Rather than being based around charging in and flanking, you now end up lining up against each other and battling with volleys of gunfire. There is also a greater reliance on cannon fire to break large units – with the right technology and canister shot, three field guns can force back a much larger infantry force. Although the big blocks of infantry are the focus, there are also small skirmish units to pick off enemies at longer range and cavalry units. The cavalry are brought down from their position of dominance in previous Total War games to a supporting role of committing flank attacks on weaker units or running down routing. This considerable change means players used to Roman or Medieval warfare need to go through the battle tutorial to wean them off the old style. The battle engine is good but the AI can occasionally have some major issues with generals running off into the firing line or units forming squares while under attack from cannon fire.

A new game style introduced in Empire is playable naval battles. This feature makes a lot of sense for the time period due to its important but unfortunately it does dissolve slightly when it is actually played. It can just turn into ships just going round and round in circles. It feels nowhere near as polished as the main land battles but it can throw up some of the most dramatic moments such as when a ship gets hit by enough rounds that it explodes, throwing sails and planks of wood all around.

The two battle modes can be played up to 4 on 4 in multiplayer mode with a good selection of maps ranging from totally flat tournament mode to the historical battles also playable in single player. The multiplayer works well and also has an automatch mode using steamworks which includes a ranking system and achievements. Post release, Creative Assembly also added in a co op campaign mode, allowing two players to take part in the Grand Campaign which will take double the amount of time a normal singleplayer campaign will take. As mentioned before, the game includes some historical battles which includes an American campaign from the start of the colonies to the American War of Independence. It actually as a good introduction for newer players although it has no where near the same level of freedom as the normal grand campaign.

Empire looks rather good, with the smoke of battle hanging over the field and being able to render a huge number of enemy troops. There is a little variety between different soldiers in a unit so it doesn’t just look like an attack of an army of clones but most of the time you won’t notice it. I actually quite like the campaign map – rather than the static maps of the previous game the game map is literally alive with trees swaying in the breeze. It really helps you to get lost in ye olde world. The sound is also really good, from the period music of the campaign to the crack of battle as artillery whizzes past. Obviously someone spent a lot of time with swords and such like. However, there are some major performance problems on some PC’s mainly to do with the load times and some in battle hiccups. At release it also had several major bugs but most of these are fixed. It is also important to point out that the game also takes up approximately 15GB and requires Steam.

Empire received 5 DLC packs after release. One of these was a very good idea which was all of the pre-order DLC in one pack which gets rid of my personal bug bears with the current trend publishers are fixating on. The other DLC packs add an additional 41 units, with some to various side which are mainly named regiments with their improved stats. These add an edge in multiplayer but also help to improve the story that singleplayer tells – its more exciting to say how the 33rd Foot re-enacted their American campaign than to just say your line infantry defended New York. The most substantial pack is the Warpath Campaign, which puts you in charge of an Native American tribe as the Europeans encroach. It does feel as professional as the main game, as there is a lack of voice acting for the new sides, along with a much smaller tech tree and reduced unit count when compared to the British or French. It does however pose more of a challenge as you can’t rely on overseas trade to support yourself so it all comes down to just holding out as long as you can against the Europeans while taking as much land for yourself. The DLC for Empire I think is really only for the main fans of the series or this game in particular.

Empire Total War is the largest Total War to date and although it almost buckles under the strain, it is still the best of the series. I do think Napoleon Total War is slightly better for newer players but it does miss out the larger scale. Most of the bugs have been ironed out so I think Empire is worth playing to see the Creative Assembly team at their finest.