Category: Review

Space Empires V is the culmination of 4X turn-based space strategy games. 4X, of course, refers to eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate, in this case, a space empire game. Pretty obvious from the title, guys. Essentially, it’s in the style of the Civilization series.

Though I usually prefer Real-Time Strategy, I really liked this game as well. Beginning with a single homeworld, the player can expand throughout their star system, and then into the surrounding ones, all the while researching new technology and weapons that allow them to control their emergent Space Empire. The customization is probably the greatest feature but also the thing that most sharply brings up the learning curve.

Its easy to build ships from your build queues, but in order to do so, you have to design them first. The design manager allows the player to select a hull chassis, and then from there, add on whatever components are necessary to make the ship run, like crew quarters or life support, and then other components to serve the ships purpose”perhaps a satellite bay, or armor and weapon systems. There is an autocomplete feature, which allows you to select a ship, and then select its purpose and the game will automatically complete the ship with whatever components you have available, but I’ve found that you can be more successful designing them yourself.

The component idea is a really outstanding feature of this game. There are so many components and different kinds of weapons, armor, shields, and types of research that it may be a little dizzying at first. Once in the swing of it, though, it allows for very varied gameplay.

Aside from the component system, another one of the remarkable features of the game is the real-time combat. Once units enter combat, you can choose to go to tactical, much in the style of Lords of the Realm II, and use your ships in real time to combat enemies. The ships animations are very good even though they fly on a 2D plane.

From a graphical standpoint, the game doesn’t rate so high. The game actually is in full 3D, though all the gameplay takes place on a 2D field (Probably for the betterwith everything else you’ll be thinking of, its much easier to simplify game controls and spend time on your strategy). The illustrations and 3D models of most of the ships are a little sub-par. The icons for each component look pretty good, but while the models for the ships look good the textures kind of bring it down.

There are a lot of races in the game, and depending on what gametype you’d choose to play you can even customize your own, choosing specific race features, bonuses, and weaknesses to customize your people. Another fun thing you can do in the game is invade and conquer your opponents planets, which allows you to colonize, for instance, a gas-giant when you have only the technology to colonize Rock planets. This will usually result in a planet populated with a different race, so you can always choose to ship in some of your own kind, or let them live on their own.

There is also an extensive online community which discusses and mods this game, and available is a lot of user-created content. Coupled with the component system, the full 3D graphics, and the advanced alliance system (ranging from trade agreements to full partnerships), and the technology, I give this game a plus. Its fun to get on here for a couple of hours, play through a game you’ve been running for a few hours from last night, then come back to it again in a week and play a few more hours. Its rather addicting.

Deal or No Deal is obviously a game that is trying bank on the new TV Show on NBC. This game show features Howie Mandel and has players randomly guessing which suit case out of the 26 total has a low amount of money in it. The idea is to be left with the highest amount possible.

Deal or No Deal is effective in sucking the player into a gambling addiction. It’s frustrating when you knock off $1 million. It’s also relieving when you knock off $0.01!

The graphics are relatively clean with minor annoyances here and there such as all the “case holding” girls looking very similar. It appears that the developer Cat Daddy Games simply reused the same model and made minor changes such as the hair, skin color, etc.

This is the sort of game that needs to be played in a social environment to get longevity out of it. The game does feature some mini-games, but none of them are nearly as fun as the actual game.

The biggest problem with this game is its price tag of $19.99. Don’t bother picking this game up until it’s at most $9.99. If you’re a fan of the Deal or No Deal TV show, the video game is just as good.

There’s a lot to say about indie games. For the most part the word indie games may make you think of a puzzle game, or something lacking commercial quality thereof. Vigil: Blood Bitterness crosses the boundary of indie game and tries to reach commercial status, but ultimately fails in doing so.

Vigil itself is an interesting game right off the bat thanks to its visuals and demon story. For the most part the graphics are in a black and white tone, with other colors, such as yellow and blue, used on specific objects. This visual style is reminiscent of the movie Sin City and as it did in the movie, the game looks great!

The gameplay consists of opening and closing doors, running around, and solving puzzles. Due to these watered-down gameplay mechanics there is a lack of interaction with the environments themselves, not that the environments are filled with many objects to toy around with in the first place. Moving the character consists of pointing the mouse and clicking. The camera is third person and is usually placed at odd angles to “scare” the player, after all this is a horror game.

Being an indie horror game, Vigil pretty much has no other games to compare itself too. It stands out above the rest of the crowd, but even so it isn’t that fun to play or even scary for that matter. Its story sounds like a good premise, well actually it’s really hard to understand what Vigil is about. This game was made by a French studio called Free Gamer and some of the translations aren’t that clear. Calling a ‘bed’, a ‘couch’ seems a little weird. The story is simple – you play as a demon called Dehon and you want to kill other demons.

Overall there isn’t anything truly wrong with Vigil: Blood Bitterness. It’s simply just not fun. If there is something that Vigil did right, it’s that it didn’t try to be the average indie game. Breaking the mold is always something hard to do and Free Gamer did it.

Stronghold 2 is a disappointing sequel to an amazing castle building game. I was excited to finally get a chance to try it out, but don’t bother.

The graphics are okay, but they’re nothing especially different from what you can find elsewhere. There are thousands of bugs, which you can try to avoid by picking up quite a few patches. The graphics would be a lot better though if the audio quality were better. The music, though maybe it’s appropriate maybe, It just doesn’t really do justice to the game. I shut it off and played my own music instead. The music does the game justice when you play the game, and the music immerses you in the world that you ONLY experience when you’re listening to THAT music. That was WAY off here.

There are a few different gameplay types. Firstly, you can either choose the path of peace, or path of war. Peace is okay, especially the free build mode that is offered. With no interference, you can choose from a few maps to just build on by yourself, and well, free build. In the war mode, you can do a skirmish with up to 7 AI players (don’t, they are terrible.) or follow the campaign.

The campaign is just bad. The characters are bad, the levels are bad (the first level is basically a point-click movement tutorial to get your guys across the map, kill a few guys, and then get on a boat.), and it is not very fulfilling. In the skirmish type, Kingmaker, you play on a large map with different regions, much like Lords of the Realm II, but of course it’s in real time. Building up a castle is kind of fun, but it can be difficult to learn how to do it effectively so that the computers will not destroy you in moments, or so that they won’t continuously destroy your mines.

Economics are handled really well. The city-simulation features are really great. They include everything from the chain-of-industry type of work, where the wheat farmers take wheat to the mill, where the millers will take the flour to the baker, etc. There is a new torture feature that is surprisingly necessary in order to keep your villagers in line, from thieving to being caught by guards, to the court, and eventual public torture on a stretching rack, or a flogging post, for example. There is also a birds eye view feature which helps greatly in planning and building, especially walls. The graphics, which are mediocre 3D, but greatly improved since the original Stronghold, make it fun to sometimes just people-watch as your peasants go about their routine.

The combat really is the issue. The game’s learning curve is pretty quick, but militarily, unless you play ‘Seige Mode’ is pretty difficult to actually start from scratch. Also, the tutorial is very very limited, but learning on your own is kind of intuitive. Regardless, this game definitely receives a stern MINUS.