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Etherlords (PC)
by Hannard the Rings trilogy was largely responsible for inflating the fantasy market to the point where every book shop you enter has at least thirty god-awful generic fantasy books with interchangeable plots and characters. There's probably a machine somewhere pumping out the books by slapping together random words from a huge list and then ... giving it some generic title like, "The Elfchalice of Nynora." Certainly, such a machine would go some way to explaining why the plot to Etherlords, the fantasy strategy game from Nival and Fishtank, is such complete and utter cobblers. The in-game, pre-mission briefings weren't much better either -- talking of things such as the "Trial of Fire" -- and the voiceover for the baddies campaign briefing was so horrendously bad that I had to crank the volume down on my headphones just to get through it. Fortunately for gamers, the rest of Etherlords isn't nearly as bad as the plot and campaign voiceovers. Playing as the leader of either the Synthets or the Chaots (being the race of Synthesis magic or Chaos magic respectively - imaginative!), your job is to battle your way across several maps, taking on various opposing races and monsters. Etherlords is best described as Heroes of Might and Magic meets Magic: The Gathering, being a turn-based game where you take control of individual champions instead of armies. These champions can then magically summon creatures to do their combat-related dirty work for them and then conveniently disappear after a fight - there's no pitting huge armies against each other in this game. In fact, the largest number of creatures you can summon during combat is ten, so it isn't too surprising that conflicts take place in a relatively small arena. Before you run over to destroy your opponent's castle (which vanquishes them from the level), it's a good idea to do a bit of resource gathering first, especially since you'll likely have to deal with their warriors, who somehow object to you kicking their homestead in. But whereas resource gathering in other games usually entails building mines and sending out harvesters to collect gems, tiberium or whatever, things are a bit different in Etherlords. Instead of constructing buildings yourself, each map comes with several already present. To obtain resources into your stockpile, you can either move one of your heroes over to a resource pile or you can capture a resource building such as a mine and you'll then receive a certain number of resources each turn until that building gets captured by your enemy. The catch is that hostile creatures guard most of the buildings. Now, if they're weak, this won't be a problem, but to defeat stronger monsters, you'll need better spells. And to buy spells, you need resources. Ah, such tricky conundrums. As you might expect, different spells are available to the different races - the Synthets have airy-fairy animal-related magic, while the Chaots have fire and evil creature spells and the like. Each hero starts off with a set of basic spells, which are free to use but not massively powerful. Managing the better spells involves not only spending resources but also using runes every time they're cast, which can be bought from shops in the game (cue pagans across the country getting inflamed at Nival's random use of magical terms). It does seem a tad odd that none of your heroes can automatically generate runes themselves, and are forced to keeping nipping off to purchase more, like you'd buy ammo for a gun - it makes the use of magic seem somewhat clinical. Combat itself is, like the map exploring part of the game, turn-based. You can only take on one monster or opponent at a time, so you can't have two heroes attacking one monster, nor do you find yourself cornered by multiple creatures. Combat takes place in a 3D arena, either in a forest, on volcanic planes or on a beach, depending where on the map you are. Unusually, though, you can't actually directly attack your opponent with a weapon. Instead, you and your opponent summon creatures to attack the other or cast spells to damage each other - quite how the most basic enemies such as stink rats have acquired magical abilities is never adequately explained, but never mind. You start the round with one magical point, but after each round of combat, you're given two extra points, and then three, and then four - which is pretty handy since the more powerful magical spells require more magical points to cast. here are a fair variety of creatures and spells at your disposal - you can zap your opponent with a bolt of lightning or create a hornet that will poison any enemy creatures it hits (but not your actual enemy). Some creatures also can't attack but are just there to absorb damage from your opponent's attacks. There are too many spells to list here but all of them look pretty spectacular. In fact, one of the best things about Etherlords is how good all the creatures, characters and spells in the game look, even compared to today's graphics. Particularly impressive is the sheer diversity of the enemy creatures - despite the hackneyed plot, you'll find nary a dwarf or dragon in Etherlords. You'll instead find yourself fighting a wide range of foes including strange floating creatures known as Halos, diseased rats, and ten or so creatures made out of metal, such as the mono-wheeled Velos and the Brass Abomination. Clearly, the designers had real imagination... it's almost a shame to kill the metal monsters! But kill them you must if you're to progress through the game, because not only do kills give you access to more resources but your heroes also gain experience points. In traditional RPG style, accumulating enough experience points will boost your hero's level, making them stronger and more resilient to damage. They also receive a skill for each new level, allowing them to do things such as buy spells cheaper or raise creatures from the dead. Sounds good? Well, there's a catch. Yes, and it's a fairly big one. At the beginning of each level, you're given new heroes and lose your old ones. This is pretty annoying to have spent the previous level building up their skills, only for them to disappear with no explanation. This seems particularly stupid because you face tougher and tougher foes as the game progresses. Also, buying a spell from one shop and having to trek across the land to another shop before you can use it tends to grate. t's these "features" that stop Etherlords being a superb game and makes it just a pretty decent one. It is fun to play -- for a while, at least -- and inclusion of a multiplayer and duel mode (where you can jump straight into magical combat) is handy. But overall, without that hook to keep you coming back, we're left with serious doubts over its longevity. It ends up coming across like Heroes of Might and Magic's slightly poorer cousin. Etherlords is worth checking out, but it's not an essential purchase. (review by me, originally posted on GamesDomain) Read the complete review |
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Star Trek Generations (PC)
by Hannard Star Trek has spawned an official licensed Star Trek bucketful of spin offs, sequels and merchandise, and the Star Trek phenomenon shows no sign of slowing down. After all, Star Trek has everything - quality acting, people beaming all over the place, and more plot cop-outs than you can shake a stick at. You know what I mean; some ... disaster, evil enemy or general unpleasantness threatens the Enterprise, to the point at which everything looks pretty desperate, about five minutes before the episode finishes. The crew of the Enterprise are surely doomed. But then, some bright spark, usually the bloke who wears a hair band over his eyes, comes up with a complicated sounding solution which is a long shot, but might just work - usually 'reversing the plasma flow' or some such techno-cobblers. And of course it works, saving everyone just in time for the credits to roll. The question is, why don't they just try that first? And do the writers really think they can get away with inserting that into every other episode? Well, I don't have the answers to those questions. So there. But I do have a copy of Star Trek: Generations, a game from Microprose, based on the Star Trek movie of the same name. You get to take control of the crew of the Enterprise, as you do battle with the particularly nasty Dr Soran, who's intent on blowing up suns with his death-star type weapon, so he can return to a paradise world known as the nexus. Yes, I know it sounds complicated and nonsensical, but that's Star Trek for you. Anyway, the movie was decent enough, so Microprose had a solid base on which to build a game. The plot of the movie has been stretched out a little for the game - whereas in the movie Soran got his arse kicked fairly quickly, in the game you get to chase him across various planets before finally phasering him between the eyes. This entails a bit of map reading, exploring and blasting. But remember, this isn't just mindless violence - the survival of the galaxy is at stake. There are actually three sections in the game. The first is a kind of map-reading trail following section. Starting off in the Stellar Cartography room of the Enterprise, you have to study the various planets and suns to find out where Dr Soran will strike next. You have to go by communications you receive from the bridge, and messages from Starfleet, which should point you in the right direction. You can perform long range scans of planets, or fly closer to them to check them out on a short range scan. But warping around systems takes time, during which Soran could have blown up another sun somewhere. There's also a fairly simplistic space combat section which crops up whenever you encounter an enemy vessel - you order your crew to close in on a target, launch a torpedo or fire phasers - and that's about it. Most of the enemy craft can be dispatched fairly easily. The third section, and the central part of the game, is the away mission section. This crops up whenever you get a fix on Soran's location, at which point you can beam down to the surface of the planet, and kick some serious bottom. Phasers at the ready.. Phasers But there's a weird 'oversight' here. You see, while I may not have the signed boxed set of Every Episode of Star Trek Ever Made (TM), I've seen enough episodes to know what the usual mission format is. A group of four or five members of the enterprise crew beam down, including one or two bit part actors, just in case anyone needs to be viciously killed in the line of duty. And so they wander about a bit, and do their Star Trek thing. But in Generations you control one single crew member who has beamed down to the surface of the planet. What happened to the rest of the crew? Typical. On some missions an excuse is given - on one mission only Worf, the Klingon, can beam down to explore the renegade Klingon base. Okay, I can accept that. But on many other missions, you seem to be given just the one crew member, for no reason at all. The reason for this is, I suspect, that this enabled Microprose to turn the away missions into a single player shoot-em-up adventuring thing. Because that's what the away missions are. You are given a weapon and a tricorder, and sent off to complete the mission. This involves somehow stopping Soran, by carrying around and using various objects, and blowing away some of the local wildlife. There's the odd spot of diplomacy, such as on the Klingon level; shoot a Klingon, and you'll find the entire base population trying to kill you. Though bizarrely, all the Klingons look identical, like some mad sort of cloning experiment has gone horribly wrong. It doesn't exactly do much for the game's atmosphere. And that's it, basically. The 3D section of the game is a little like Realms of the Haunting in its object collecting monster blasting approach, though it's nowhere near as good as that game. Complete enough of the missions, and you'll find your way to Soran, and to the end of the game. Fail more than two, and you'll find yourself relieved of duty - Game Over. Voices for Generations are supplied by the cast of the movie, including Malcom McDowell who plays Dr Soran. There's the odd video clip, but surprisingly little use has been made of actual movie footage. And while the in-game graphics look okay, the 3D engine is appallingly slow, far slower than any other 3D game I've seen. Oh, and did I mention that when you save a game, it only saves what mission you are on, not your actual position in the mission. So if you die, you have to start again the beginning of that mission. A major pain, which really does put one hell of a kink in the game. Star Wreck At this point, you might have guessed that I don't actually like Generations much. And you'd be right. Now some of you may be thinking that I don't understand Star Trek properly. Maybe I do, and maybe I don't. But this game doesn't even feel like proper Star Trek material. For a start, you don't get to see the rest of the ship... you can't leave the Stellar Cartography room and explore. You also can't talk to the rest of the crew, or even the Klingons, and you can't explore anywhere else apart from the planets where Soran is. And if you've seen the movie, you know exactly what's going to happen. Trekkies will find very little to amuse themselves here. And the three sections of the game are so boring and lacklustre there's little here for regular gamers, either. Do yourself a favour.. either rent a Star Trek DVD, or buy another game. Just leave this poor quality cash in alone. (reviewed by me, originally posted on GamesDomain) Read the complete review |
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Star Trek - Armada (PC)
by Hannard When it comes to space operas like Star Trek or Babylon 5 you can have all the square-jawed heroes, but what you really need to give a show that extra edge is some really nasty baddies. Bablyon 5 pulled this off well, featuring the evil Shadows, with their jet black ships and sneaky plots. And the entertainingly off-kilter Lexx's central ... antagonist was a strange shadowy lifeform who initially ruled a rather macabre universe dominating empire (which Star Wars' Imperial Empire had nothing on) and later became a sort of half machine creature who succeeded in destroying the entire universe piece by piece. But the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation must claim the prize for creating the best evil baddies ever - the Borg. The Borg are half human, half mechanical and uglier than the Daleks ever were. Except that is, for Voyager's Seven of Nine who has been shorn of most of her robotic appendages and appears to be the only member of the Voyager crew with a with access to unlimited supplies of lycra and special Borg 'implants' which probably contravene every Starfleet clothing regulation. Still, she's more a blip than an emerging trend amongst the Borg, and the rest of the Borg remain thoroughly nasty, their nastiness rating boosted by the fact that they spend most of their free time mercilessly assimilating all species they come across, turning them into Borg drones and stripping them of their individuality. And if that wasn't worrying enough, they're virtually unstoppable. They're so nasty, in fact, that I suspect at least half of all the people who bought Star Trek: Armada bought it just for the chance to play as the Borg. After all, everyone knows that the when it comes to lethal weaponry and bottom-kicking ships, bad is best. Unfortunately, those looking forward to assimilating the universe in one fell swoop may be a little disappointed upon picking up Star Trek: Armada, for a couple of reasons. The first of the reasons is that the Borg campaigns, like those of the other races, slot neatly into the storyline. This is an interesting approach in itself but does have the downside that you can't do anything that would alter the storyline. You can't assimilate the Enterprise for example, or assimilate the Earth and rule the galaxy (on a permanent basis, at least). Having the bad guys win is apparently not on the cards - the Federation always manage to save the day. Secondly the Borg in Armada are rather weak compared to their counterparts in the Star Trek: First Contact movie and the ST:NG. In the series, the Borg cube dwarfed the Enterprise and the only way the Federation could defeat the Borg was by running around like headless chickens for 40 minutes and then coming up with some techo-gibberish to miraculously disable and or destroy them. In Star Trek: Armada however, each cube is about the same size as the Enterprise and about as strong. The series and movie Borg ships also had the ability to remodulate their shields thereby negating any phaser damage they may have received - this too has been taken out of the game, despite the fact that the Borg ships, when ordered to move, often say 'remodulating shields'. 'Resistance is futile?' - resistance is too flipping easy, more like. Oh, how cruel it is to have your plans for galactic domination crushed... On the plus side, you do still get a variety of Borg weaponry that you can use against your foes, such as the combined holding beam and assimilator attached to the Borg Cube that can grab and assimilate the crew of any ship, even if their shields are up. Other races can take over ships too, but they have to wait till their opponents' shields are low - but it's still worth doing as there's something ego-boosting, especially in multiplayer mode, about nicking your enemy's ships and then using them to take out their own. It's one of the rather nice touches that makes Star Trek Armada such a promising game when you first pick it up. Other nice (or 'neat' if you're an American) touches include the multiplayer game which features a skirmish mode so you can take on AI opponents in lieu of kicking arse on-line and getting some practice in. Plus, should you go about setting up your own multiplayer game you can customise pretty much everything in the game - including whether or not the Ferengi put in an appearance. When this race is in the game they'll fly around the game area and nick any crewless derelicts, hauling them away before you can re-crew and rescue them. At least in theory that's the way it's supposed to happen - in truth, I witnessed a rather monumental Ferengi bug not once but twice while playing Star Trek: Armada. Not only did a Ferengi ship manage to capture one of my ships that was fully crewed with Borg, having recently been assimilated, but on traversing an asteroid belt the Ferengi ship cleared the belt okay but my ship got stuck behind an asteroid, so the Ferengi's blue tractor beam stretched, and stretched, and stretched. Until, no - my ship didn't escape, the ship was mysteriously pulled through a solid asteroid and taken off the map. And the above bug wasn't the only one I ran into either - even with the latest patch installed I ran into a number of others, some minor, some major. The worst one was on the fourth Federation mission - after destroying all the Borg vessels and bases I found myself unable to complete the mission as there was one green dot on the map. This dot turned out to be nothing at all - not a ship, not a Borg base, just a strange dot that could not be destroyed, so I ended up skipping the mission as have dozens and even hundreds of people if the strategic newsgroups are anything to go by. Shipping a product with this many bugs just isn't on and it's especially annoying as Star Trek: Armada had the potential to be a real corker. In strategic terms too, Armada is a little under par - it could have done with a little more unit tweaking and unit variety. Granted, the differing special abilities of the ships do add some variety to the game but they don't disguise the fact that each side has pretty much the same basic types of ships and units. In Total Annihilation - a comparison that's especially valid since Armada is just a 2D strategy game in space - no single unit could kick the electronic cack out of every other one. You could blitz Big Bertha guns with aircraft, manufacture anti-aircraft units that could take out flying vehicles and use smaller craft to take out the giant stomping robots and tanks. But in Star Trek: Armada - even when you have the 'director's cut' mode turned on which means ships turn and zoom around in combat - you need only to manufacture six or so of the big units such as the large Enterprise starships or the Borg Cubes to be able to take out pretty much everything in your path. Even a swarm of fighters doesn't stand much chance against a heavily armed starship - although you'd think the fighters would move too fast for the bigger ships to be able to get a lock on them. Still, no-one said Sci-fi had to be realistic. Or indeed that Star Trek: Armada had to be an entertaining and bugless game, more's the shame. The real telling point is that if it wasn't for the Star Trek licence, Armada probably wouldn't have even made it to market. As it stands, Star Trek: Armada does feel like a rushed product. In fact, it feels like the production team were working on it happily, making good progress, when someone in marketing decided they needed it released next month, and they shipped it way ahead of time. Star Trek: Armada could have been a good game, but as it stands it's just a case of big name, shame about the game. (review written by me, originally posted on GamesDomain) Read the complete review |
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