No review this week so enjoy a short game-play clip instead!

Well, another week just rolls right on by as I've been thoroughly enjoying myself. Left 4 Dead has been a go-to lately, I finally unlocked my missing unit in Might & Magic, and I'm level 18 in MAG. Additionally, I started playing through Darksiders and Bioshock 2. I have to say that I feel utterly spoiled with the quality of games that have been assaulting my wallet since late October of last year, and there's only more on the horizon. Oh, and I ordered a Hauppauge HD-PVR as well, so I can start capturing stuff from my consoles too, but it's on back-order so I will have to wait.

I really feel bad for neglecting my second, renegade play-through of Mass Effect 2, which I want to finish up before writing a wall of text up on that game. But to be honest, after some technical hiccups, I am absolutely loving Bioshock 2 and really looking forward to seeing how the big daddy resolves Rapture's latest problem. As things stand now, I think I'll take a week off from publishing a review and have a relatively comprehensive MAG one ready for next week. For Bioshock 2, I feel inspired to take a different approach in how I present my thoughts on that game, and hopefully I can come up with a fun surprise.

My usual zombie-killing crew played a custom Left 4 Dead Campaign called "Die Screaming" that was put together really well, except that we broke it at the end. Video of the ensuing antics can be seen below.

It was jokingly suggested that I review all of the custom campaigns we've played, but I think it could be beneficial to note some of the really high-points that I had with quite a number of the maps that were fresh, innovative, and something Valve could stand to learn from. That might be a fun project when I get closer to the bottom of this stack of games next to me...

What's had a massive effect on me lately

This week has been kind of crazy.  Last weekend I finished up a rushed playthrough of the original Mass Effect on PC so that I'd have a complete save to transfer over.  I ended up finishing somewhere during the wee hours of Saturday morning, Mass Effect was ejected, and Mass Effect 2 was installed and played for a short bit before I crashed.  Finished my first play-through of that over the course of the week, and Mass Effect 2 is definitely a worthy successor, and deserving of quite a bit of the praise that it's getting.  With Might and Magic on my mind, I also purchased Critter Crunch, by Capybara Games, on PSN and enjoyed that for a few hours.

Finally, I gave the new Aliens vs. Predator demo a spin.  That's a real head-scratcher Rebellion put out.  Multiplayer deathmatch only, and not even team deathmatch.  So as an alien, I'd get the drop on a predator, one-shot them, and then have another alien tail-stab me from behind; it was a disorientating experience.  I pre-ordered it because I'm going to give Rebellion the benefit of the doubt on this, but it should make for some good subject material either way.

My other purchase this week was MAG, the 256-player tactical-shooter MMO hybrid for the PS3 by Zipper Interactive.  The premise to the game seems interesting, as well as the player progression.  As if I didn't have enough other stuff to play!

I'm not sure what I'm going to run with this week.  It'll either be a review for Mass Effect or Borderlands, so let the anticipation begin.

Review: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

My old Nintendo DS was probably my most played system for a while before last year.  Looking back at 2009, I tried some Professor Layton, which is fun, but slow-moving and something I feel no need to play for more than one or two puzzles at a go-through.  Otherwise, I went back to Brain Age and did the majority of the Sudoku puzzles.  To be fair, I did mess with Phantasy Star 0, but that’s really only a good game with other people and not in bed after hours.  I recently completed Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes by Capybara Games, and that cartridge really gave me a reason to recharge my DS.

Clash of Heroes is a turn-based puzzle strategy role-playing game.  The game-play of Clash of Heroes is intuitive and seems pretty simple, until you actually try and write it all out like I attempted.  To delete most of the paragraphs following this and just say, “Play the tutorials” because they demonstrate everything more than adequately enough would work, but this was a fun challenge so I’m going to stick with it.

The overall premise is that the player enters a “battle” against an opponent with a rectangular grid as a workspace.  Rows are 8 units wide and columns are 6 units deep.   Whoever goes first gets to take two actions during their first turn, and then each player gets 3 actions for each subsequent turn.  The enemy’s gate is up, or to put it less obscurely your units attack the enemy, whose own army is at the top of the screen.  Actions consist of moving bottom-most units to different columns, deleting units to move other units up or to free space in the column, or summoning more units.  Units must be “activated” to attack or perform abilities, or are otherwise “idle” and take up space.  Activated units cannot be moved while idle units can be, obviously. 

The tools at the player’s disposal are:

• Throw-away common units: these are guys like foot-soldiers or archers.  Every faction gets three different kinds of these units.  Depending on a player’s strategy, all three can be taken and each has a unique color, one type can be taken and will appear across all three colors, or anything in between.   When three units of the same color are lined up vertically in a column they will “group” up and start charging up for a number of rounds until they will eventually cross into the other screen and damage enemy units or the enemy itself.  Three or more like units lined up horizontally in a row will form a wall that moves to the top of the player’s screen and will take damage from enemy units.


• Mid-tier champion units: units in this category pack a bit more of a punch than the common units.  Depending on the faction, there are two to three types of this unit available.  Champions take up two column spaces and are one row wide.  Examples are stags that will hop over enemy walls or vampires that will heal the player for any damage they do.  Champion units will come in any color and require two common units lined up behind them to activate, with the two common units merging into the champion and freeing up the space behind. The player can have up to ten units of a champion type and will cost the player resources.  When a champion is destroyed before it activates it is gone and will need to be re-purchased.  A player can have up to ten units of a particular champion type.


• High-grade hero units:  Like champions, hero units cost resources and will be diminished if destroyed before activation.  Heroes are fewer in number than the champions, with a limit of three to five units, and cost significantly more too.  Heroes are two column spaces long, two row spaces wide, and require four like-colored common units behind them to activate.  As with champions, when activated, the common units will merge into the hero unit.  Heroes range from grim reapers that, after 6 rounds, will kill the enemy player automatically if they just hit them to acid-spewing dragons that cut off rows of the field for a short period of time with their attack.

Units of a like color can be “linked” if they are set to attack in the same turn, and this gives them a slight damage boost.  Like units of the same color can be “stacked” if activated in the same column.  For example, a group of blue spearmen will attack in two turns.  Two blue spearmen are lined up behind them in the same column.  You could add one more blue spearman which would make them activate.  The new group would then merge into or “stack” up onto the old group, doubling their strength and still ready to attack in two turns. 

The campaign mode in Clash of Heroes took me about 27 hours to complete, and this is where any RPG aspects of the game come into play.  Story-wise, Clash of Heroes is on the cutesy-side of things but serves the game well by exposing the player to each of the five playable, uniquely themed factions.  Effectively, five teenagers survive an attack, are scattered across the fantasy world, and try to reunite with each other.  The player assumes the role of one of these characters in each chapter and takes that character from level one to eight or higher, unlocking new items, units, and characters of each faction for use in either multiplayer or quick-play against an AI opponent.  As a character is leveled, their hit-points increase and they get a larger pool of total units that can be in play at a time.   Items that can be equipped one at a time serve a variety of purposes, from having a huge impact on the conventions of the game like allowing walls to be moved as idle units are or letting the player summon reinforcements without costing an action, to simply buffing the ability of a given unit slightly.  Each character also has a special ability that charges up when units are activated and damage is dealt.  Some characters deal direct damage or attempt to mitigate damage and go about that through different means.  One of the undead powers sacrifices every idle common unit on their field to power an energy blast, while a knight’s power would be summoning a last-ditch wall to try and preempt such an attack.  I would find myself sorely missing the offensive powers when I was stuck playing as a defensive character.

One thing about the story I did find particularly interesting was that, of the five main characters, three are siblings, and three are women.  The sibling angle makes the urgency in which the characters are trying to get back together have more meaning and explain the lengths for power that one of them is willing to reach for.  I’m not sure why there are more female characters though, and if that can be attributed to something in the Might & Magic franchise or the fact that puzzle games reportedly have a large following of women gamers.  Regardless, it was nice to see some women characters being raised above the chain-mail bikini trope.

The unlocking of the items and units is where I take contention with Clash of Heroes.  Since there is no consistency about how many champion units a faction has available, I missed unlocking one somewhere for the demonic faction, which happens to be the fourth chapter of five in the campaign.  If I could have just gone back to that chapter it wouldn’t necessarily be worth mentioning, but this is aggravating and soured my experience with Clash of Heroes when honestly I just wanted to play a skirmish match or two and instead saw a little padlock logo over the unit space in the selection menu.

At that point I really had to stop and think, and the temptation to just eject the cartridge and put it back in the game case was potent.  That I didn’t and as of this writing still find myself whittling away at a new campaign for a few minutes before bed each night speaks to the strength of the core game-play.  I can’t wait to have a comprehensive choice of units to try and crush the computer with since I don’t know anyone else who has this deep, unique, and addictive little game.

Full Stovetop

I’ve currently got a review of Dragon Age: Origins for PC that I need to finish editing, as well as set aside the time to collect screenshots and capture some video from the game for this week.  Between that, a new and exciting campaign project that my girlfriend and I have cooked up for L4D2, and work/life stuff, I am clueless as to how I will have a play-through of Mass Effect on PC ready when the new game lands at my doorstep next Tuesday.  Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes has been a good reason to keep my DS charged lately; it’s a great little game that I look forward to expounding upon further in the near future.