Monthly Game Smackdown: January 2010 – Round 2
Welcome back to the Monthly Game Smackdown! As a reminder, the MGS is where 4 games are picked at the beginning of the month and every week each game is played for an hour. Last week, I discussed the elimination of one game with our previous format of the smackdown. Not particularly satisfied with that, every Monday I’ll discuss what I find fun, or not, fun about the game based on the previous week’s game time.
It’s a new Monday and each of the games has had my attention now for two hours. Find out if initial impressions have changed with an extra hour behind the controls.
Game #1
- HISTORY Great Empires: Rome (DS)
- Current Rating: Sorta Fun
What was played
Started a new campaign and spent the remaining time building a few armies only to be defeated.
Thoughts so far
Part of me wants to like this game more than I do mostly because it’s a new style(for this system . . .well, maybe just for me ON this system). A lot of my time was spent cycling through the cities seeing what I could build or what armies I could recruit. As it takes 4 turns for anything to get built, the rest of my time was spent moving my armies around and trying to attack the nearest enemy. After losing all of my armies to the first city, I decided that I should probably send a bigger group at them. I then spent 4 rounds unable to get two different groups to merge with no success. Eventually I managed to get a larger group together and lost those as well.
In closing, this game is more difficult than it looks. It also appears that it will take as long to play through this game as it took the Roman empire to rise and fall.
Game #2
- Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (PSP)
- Current Rating: Sorta Fun
What was played
As this is a platformer, I hit start and headed on in.
Thoughts so far
This is my introduction to Ratchet and Clank and the previous games were similar, I can see how the series has done well. Seems like a very solid platformer, the graphics and controls are smooth, the music is nice, the plot is eh. Having a little trouble getting used to the camera controls even after two hours of playing. And, has Ratchet always been a dick?
I like that there’s something to watching during the loading screen. All in all, this is a very well built game, but they only built a little bit of fun into it.
Game #3
- Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships (PC)
- Current Rating: Sorta Fun
What was played
As this is a single-player RPG campaigner, I started with the advanced character type and, after running about and getting killed, picked an easier character type and am still trying to get my crew together.
Thoughts so far
This is the first pirate RPG I’ve spent any real time with and I’m finally getting into it. The first hour was difficult and the military had no problem in rounding me up and running me through.
For the second hour, I thought I’d spend some time with the manual then with one of the easier character types. The actual gameplay is pretty simple provided you have a mouse with three buttons on it and have checked out the command keys a few times. Where the game seems overly complex is in how they have set up the skills and attributes of your character. With the vast number of things there are to tweak I wonder if you can really tell a difference in the gameplay by adjusting anything other than the standard “strength”, “constitution”, etc.
Currently, I’m running around getting killed by various groups while trying to run some errands in order to pick up coin in order to buy things and a crew . . . basically, I’m playing a complex RPG with so-so graphics but still having an OK time.
Game #4
- Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising (PC)
- Current Rating: Sorta Fun
What was played
First hour saw me going through the tutorial and starting the Soviet campaign. Second hour, I switched over to Yuriko’s campaign.
Thoughts so far
Well, this one is off to a slow start. The tutorial and Soviet campaign are more of the same Command and Conquer that I remember playing 10 years ago which (with some new units and buildings), in my case, is ho-hum. On the downside, the graphics don’t seem to have changed much and the non-American forces have been dumbed down to the unfortunate stereotypes. The loading screens seem to have information about the backstory but go by so fast you only get to read a couple of lines. The cutscenes seem to be telling us audibly about the backstory, but visually they tell us that girls have breasts.
However, the second hour I decided to try out the extra campaign of Yuriko which is where all the fun is. You have a limited number of things you can do but all of them are powerful and the simplicity adds to the enjoyment. The current rating is at Sorta Fun because of the average between the two hours. I will probably wind up playing all the way through this one as it’s leaning more towards the Fun side and might actually go back and try the game proper just to see if they hid the good bits later on.