Abe's Free PC Game Dynasty (With Reviews!) - Vega Strike Reviewed! [Archive]

Abe Sargent

09-05-2009, 08:33 PM

Review of Battle for Westnoth

http://linuxtidbits.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/the-battle-for-wesnoth-14-main-screen.png

How do you review a game that is free? If you get just five hours of enjoyment out of it, isn't it still worth it, technically? I am going to give you what I think the replayability of the games are, so that you can get a handle on just how much you can get from it.

The Battle for Wesnoth was originally released in 2003, and it looks like it was released in 2001. The graphics are dated. Despite that, the game looks fine, because for the most part, PC graphics have not evolved in this past decade like they have in previous ones. Playing a 1987 game in 1996 would be hard. This is barely noticeable.

http://www.jwbjerk.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/wesnoth.jpg

I thought the music was annoying, and I turned it off within an hour of play.

This is a turn-based strategy wargame. You move pieces across the board, then your opponent moves pieces, and so forth. When two pieces meet, combat begins based on a variety of rules in the game system. That's it. Simple enough.

In fact, if you check out the tutorial, you'll find yourself done in 10 or 15 minutes. The game is quite simple and easy to pick up.

You get gold every turn. The more villages you have flagged, the more gold you'll get. Units have a gold cost, and can only be recruited in forts and castles by your main unit's presence. They also have a gold upkeep. You can't find pots of gold on the map or gain it by defeating enemies, so you have to watch your resource intake.

Units have hit points, and some traits, and then a level and XP. As a unit levels up, they becom more powerful and gain new abilities. Some units can level into 2 o more things, and you can choose which you want. I leveled a spearman into a pikeman, and he still wasn't much. When I leveled him into a 3rd level Halbardier, however, he became a weapon of death. Dude had the first strike ability and dealt 20 damage a hit. Nasty.

Character have multiple attacks (usually). Some are close range, and some are range attacks. A character will deal a certain amount of damage, and have a certain amount of attacks. A Spearman might have a 5-3 attack with their spear. That means they attack three times, and deal 5 for each hit. Whichever way a unit it attacked, that is how it will defend itself. Some units have very weak close range attacks, or have no range attacks, so find the weakness and hit it.

Units also have traits when they are created, and skills that affect the game. There are only a few traits and units come with two. One is quick, and they move a bit farther, another has more hp, another hits more, etc. Then units have skills and abilities. There is one that heals and cure adjacent units each turn. When you level that one up o level 3, it gains the illuminate ability and makes adjacent squares day.

The game board moves through night and day. Two day, dusk, two night, dawn. Units are either lawful, chaotic or neutral. Chaotic units are at +25 at night and -25 at day to attack damage, lawful units are the opposite, and neutral units in the middle. If your scenario is underground, it is permanently night.

Units have various attack strengths and weaknesses. For example, a Knight has a lance with a piercing attack and a morning star with a smashing attack. The morning star does a lot more damage against skeletons. Find the right attack for an enemy's weakness and you can dole out some damage.

http://www.rollachan.org/ga/src/119741033211.jpg

Here you can see Rhobryn's level, XP, HP, abilities (teleport), traits (strong,quick), movement left, and attacks with damage, # of attacks and type listed.

Units dodge more on certain terrain than on others. An elf in teh woods at night can dodge 70% of attacks that come its way. Exposed in a river or stream, you can usually hit a foe. Your horsemen are good on a plains, your pikemen good in towns, etc.

As a result, there are a number of factors you have to balance in order to attack. What is the dodge chance of your foe? How much damage and how many attacks do you get? What are your attacks range? What are your attacks characteristic vs their resistance? What time of day is it? What special abilities do you or your foe have? Attacking into a drain attack on defense means you might actually heal your foe instead of dealing damage. What ground are you on, for the counter attack?

Even though the game is simple enough, there is sufficient complexity here to make you think and play.

In the game, you can recall any troops that survive from one scenario in a campaign to the next. This costs 20 gold to do, but you usually begin the scenario with a large pot of gold, since gold can roll over from one scenario to the next with limitations. Troops that level up are going to be a lot better than new meat. Troops that you are given as part of a scenario have the loyal characteristic. That means they are gold free for upkeep, so treat them well and level them up, because they are worth it.

In the scenario I played, you have a couple of interesting things. At one point, I had to choose whether or not to ditch my elf allies and ally with bandits against the undead horde. I would lose my elf units, gain bandit ones, nad be able to recruit bandit-type units in the future. I stayed the course because my elves were awesome. Later, one of my captains ran back home to let everyone know what was happening and regaurd my town, because we were going to be gone longer. On his way, he has to fight some bad guys. If you recall units you have developed, then you do not get them back in the main scenario, because they have gone home, so I choose to use all fresh units. That was a nice difference. I also fought in a cave in one scenario, and found a bunch of trolls that I could ally with for some serious goldege. As a result, the campaign felt different, even though it had maybe 7 or 8 scenarios all in all. There were a ton of campaigns with radically different numbers of scenarios and difficulties, including the main campaign with 25 scenarios.

The game features hot seat and online multiplayer if you are interested.

In other news, I may not like BfW's math. I decided to reload an old save during a hard mission on this Isle of the Dead. My mermen had a 50% chance ot hit this bady guy and missed horribly they hit twice out of 12 attacks. That's odd, I think, so I reload to try again. This time, 4 out of 12., still low but close. I decide to try again, just to see - 7 out of 12. That's where I would expect to see it.

Throughout the rest of the scenario I save just before making attacks and then load and try again. The results were that I was regularly hitting lower than my %. I would hit 40% on a character with 70%, or 30% on one with 50%. The result was that I felt the actual hit percentages were much lower than the display percentages, but not on the counter attack. My opponent would hit their numbers on the counter. I would have a person with a7-% chance and four sims, three attacks each, only hit 4 times, despite math saying it should be more like 8-9. There were numerous examples of this.

This revelation greatly disturbs me. It means that the game may be cheating in favor of the foe, or that it has a problem with its basic mechanics

I'm not the biggest fan of the "been there, done that" fantasy that the game provides. Elves are sterotypical elves down to being good at archery, haughty, and tree huggers. Humans are every breed from bandits to nobles. Dwarves, orcs, undead, etc. All as you can imagine they would be, with no derivation. A bit more flavor would have been nice.

As a result, Battle for Wesnoth does have some dated graphics and some music that I really don't like that much. The gameplay is simple and easy to pick up, and there is some strategic depth here, but I doubt the simple mechanics can hold my interest for too much longer. I've played for about 6-7 total hours, and I want to play more, but how much more? 10 more hours? 5 more? 20 more? I can't say.

It's worth checking out, no question.

Overall: 3 stars outta 5

Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/)

hoopsguy

09-06-2009, 10:30 AM

Are you open to requests for free games to review? If so, UFO Alien Invasion is one that is intriguing to me and that I might pick up based on a good review. I've got other stuff that has me interested in my free time right now, but that one is sitting in my personal queue at the moment.

Obviously if you have no interest in playing this game then completely disregard this.

Abe Sargent

09-06-2009, 10:57 AM

I do have that in my queue right now, but I'm playing through the 25 scenario campaign in BfW right now. Probably will get to UFO:AI soon.

In other news, I may not like BfW's math. I decided to reload an old save during a hard mission on this Isle of the Dead. My mermen had a 50% chance ot hit this bady guy and missed horribly they hit twice out of 12 attacks. That's odd, I think, so I reload to try again. This time, 4 out of 12., still low but close. I decide to try again, just to see - 7 out of 12. That's where I would expect to see it.

Throughout the rest of the scenario I save just before making attacks and then load and try again. The results were that I was regularly hitting lower than my %. I would hit 40% on a character with 70%, or 30% on one with 50%. The result was that I felt the actual hit percentages were much lower than the display percentages, but not on the counter attack. My opponent would hit their numbers on the counter.

This revelation greatly disturbs me. It means that the game may be cheating in favor of the foe, or that it has a problem with its basic mechanics.

I will add these paragraphs to my review.

Abe Sargent

09-06-2009, 12:32 PM

I e-mailed my review to the main guy in charge of the project, and he said the rng is designed so that it can be streaky at times.

Abe Sargent

09-06-2009, 11:34 PM

Review of The Ur-Quan Masters

I mentioned earlier that if I had already played a free d/l game, I would go ahead and give you a review. I have played this thing through like four or five times in the past three years.

The Ur-Quan Masters - Downloads (http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php)

The UQM is done and complete. The Ur-Quan Masters is, for those not in the know, a virtually identical version of Star Control 2, one of the biggest classics from the 1990s PC era of dominance.

The game designers released the code from SC2, and a build was made quickly by fans. Today, UQM is complete, with only a few cosmetic changes (like music). You even have to use keyboard keys instead of a mouse as an input device.

How do I start to talk about SC2/UQM? If you;ve played it, then go d/l the new version and play it to death. Love it. If you haven;t where do I start?

I could start by stating that SC2 is awesome. It's not a game that is too much like anything else. It's really its own thing. I loves it! I could say is has the best and most fleshed out alien races of any sci-fi game ever, period.

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots/slaveshield.png

Earth has been enslaved by the Ur-Quan.

So, what I decided to do was cut and paste from my review from my Top 100 games countdown.

http://i.i.com.com/cnet.g2/images/2003/all/boxshots1/564589.jpg

Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well.

You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow.

You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station.

After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other.

In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls.

If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time.

Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions.

Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship:

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots/shipyard.png

If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game.

You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel.

StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter.

Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations.

Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage.

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots/melee3.png

The game has multiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game.

The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away.

There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them:

StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik.

The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive.

The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz).

StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game.

Overall: 3.5 stars outta 5 for today, because the graphics are dated a bit, but it's still a great game.

Abe Sargent

09-06-2009, 11:39 PM

I played Battle for Westnoth pretty much straight through today and I'm starting to tire of it. Perhaps the next game will begin soon. Of course, I decided to do the mega 25 scenario campaign, and that may be part of it.

So if I don;t do any more ,that will be about 20-25 hours of gaming for $0 and it stays on my puter if I want to load it up and play again laters.

Abe Sargent

09-06-2009, 11:45 PM

The next game in my queue, is LinCity-NG.

LincityWiki (http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 05:01 AM

I just spent a few hours tinkering around with LinCity-NG:

Review for LinCity-NG

I had a lot of high hopes for this SimCity clone. It's been a while since the last SimCity of any quality, and there have been a lot of areas targetable for improvement. Even if the game doesn;t have all of the bells and whistles of SC4, a good city builder would be a lot of fun to play.

Unfortunately, LinCity is neither good, nor fun to play.

http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/images/0/0b/Lincity-ng-2.0.png

LinCity-NG is actually a fork from the original LinCity which had been developed for four years, and the developers decided to take the code and try again. Well, they need a LinCity-NNG.

After playing around with it for a couple of hours, I am done with this game. Let's move on to the next one!

Like many city builders, you have to build infrastructure like trash collecting, roads, water and power. Water is easy, and consists of only building a well every so many residents, and you'll have water. There are roads labeled "track" and then higher quality roads. Trains. Power. Trash goes to something called a "tip."

No police stations, but you can build Fire coverage. You get two type of schools to choose from. You build residential areas in a 3x3 grid already set up for you. You can build farms. You cannot build any industrial or commerical areas. Instead, you can build your own buildings.

The game is very production heavy. There are some coal seams and you can build Coal mines. You can build Ore Mines, Communes - which make charcoal, and a few other things like Potteries and Blacksmiths and Mills.

The result is a weird looking town. You have modern late 20th century things like a Recycling Center and modern power options next to a blacksmith, communes, and wells. And nothing commercial at all. No gas stations, no stores, nothing.

http://img.linuxexpres.cz/2005/9/hry/lincity2.png

Where are they shopping?

I built my first city, and no one moved in. I couldn't even figure out what was wrong, so I just loaded a pre-saved city already in progress and built from it.

The game's sounds are virtually midi level with very poor sounds. In the music, an ambulance goes by, and I swear, it's the worst ambulance sound I've heard. It sounds like it was played on a child's instrument instead of a real one. Yuck.

The graphics are acceptable but dated. Totally looks 7-9 years old.

As a result, LinCity-NG is not worth your time. Even though it was updated in January with release 2.0, this is not done, as far as I am concerned. The dynamics are off, the documentation is poor or missing, the graphics are older, the music is awful, the gameplay is mismatched at best and downright befuddling at worst. Ick.

I didn't even get to the winning conditions, and one is supposedly evacuating all of your people in spaceships.

Overall - 1 outta 5 for effort.

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 11:26 AM

What game is next in the queue?

hxxp://www.rtsoft.com/dink/download.htm

Let's just grab something random off the list.

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 02:59 PM

I'm over two hours in and I'm more pleased with this than with LinCity-NG

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 06:52 PM

5 hours in with Dink Smallwood is about 2/3s of the way through the game.

hoosierdude

09-07-2009, 07:09 PM

5 hours in with Dink Smallwood is about 2/3s of the way through the game.
Played the heck out of Dink in the day. Absolutely had fun with the game, dated graphics, but, the storyline is enjoyable, all in all not always fun for everyone, but I had fun with it.

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 08:25 PM

Played the heck out of Dink in the day. Absolutely had fun with the game, dated graphics, but, the storyline is enjoyable, all in all not always fun for everyone, but I had fun with it.

I just acquired the Light Sword in the Edge of the World, in case you remember it well enough to know where I am.

Abe Sargent

09-07-2009, 09:31 PM

Just finished the game. Offical Time - 6:35, but that doesn;t include reloading after dying.

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 01:36 PM

Review of Dink Smallwood

Dink Smallwood was released commercially by some independent developers back in 1997. After the initial press sold, the developer was not going to make more copies for sale, so it was released as freeware in 1999, and later the code was released.

Dink is an...odd...game to say the least. The game is basically an action RPG in the style of NES RPGs like Zelda. In fact, imagine Zelda with a few more RPG elements like XP, levels, and three stats, and you have Dink Smallwood, sorta. The first time I burned down a tree with a Fireball spell to reveal a hidden passage that held a heart Container, I felt the Zelda.

http://swankworld.com/Features/indiegames/images/dink/dink1.jpg

In this game, you play a Pig Farmer with delusions of grandeur who is forced by circumstance to be more than he is. You help out a variety of towns, and each time, more of the map opens to you. Eventually, you piece the Edge of the Word at the behest of the king, and eventually find the Big Bad and kill him in the Darklands.

The game looks bad, and I'm not going to cherry coat it. Even in 1997 it had old graphics. I'm warning you now, so if you d/l, you won;t say, wow, I never expected it to be this hideous.

The game's pseudo-midi music is barely noticeable, but one tune I liked, and I would turn it up for that one, and then back down again.

This game has a weird and wicked sense of humor. I laughed a few times. Dink Smallwood is trying to get his bone on, and there are many chances to flirt and ask out the ladies of the kingdom, all to no avail. At the same time, there are some serious events that happen too, and between the laughter and the severe nature of some events, the game feels weird.

http://i.d.com.com/i/dl/media/dlimage/88/19/8/88198_large.jpeg

The gameplay is okay, but not great. The reach of the character is poor in relation to his weapon, so the actual fighting mechanic is no great shakes. There are bows, swords, and boots that are weapons, and I would have loved a hotkey that allows you to switch between a bow and a sword while fighting, so you would not have to got into your inventory to switch things.

The game is short. I started it and finished it in one day. Granted, that day was a holiday, but still, just one day of play. There is also virtually no replayability to the main game, but there are add-on games that have been added by the modding community, including one Monkey Island...

I don;t want to spoil the game for any who want to play it, so I am steering clear of major spoilers.

One problem with the game was severe backtracking. if you get stuck in the early part of the game, just go to places you've already been to, and then you will find a screen where a character is now doing something, and you unlock the next thing to do.

Note that there are a lot of character development pieces for random characters that have nothing to do with the game whatsoever.

Kudos for having unique monsters (except for dragons) instead of your normal run of the mill monster. Battle for Wesnoth could learn from that.

Anyway, d/l it and enjoy it for what it is worth, a short, action-RPG with a Zelda feel and a weird humor style.

Summary: 2 stars outta 5.

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 06:47 PM

What game is next at bat?

Yo, Frankie!

I haven;t played a platformer in a while. Will I still like it?

Yo Frankie! - Apricot Open Game Project - Yo Frankie! - Apricot Open Game Blog (http://www.yofrankie.org/)

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 06:50 PM

One of the reasons why I chose it because it looks like it has great graphics. We'll see, but that's a great start after some of these more recent games like LinCity-NG and Dink.

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 08:55 PM

Review of Yo Frankie!

This game is a pretty platformer that was created by a university last year in Amsterdam as a project, and then released for free. It seemed like something interesting, so I went to take a look.

You are playing the part of a squirrel called Frank. You are to explore the world, you can attack, jump, pick up and throw items. The graphics are really strong and the world features enemies like rats and sheep for you to attack and kill, and then you can pick up the bones left behind.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/games/linux-games-6-yo-frankie-5.jpg

See how pretty? You are the dead squirrel in the middle.

Sound great? Yep. here;s the problem with Yo Frankie. Because it was a project to push the envelope for a pair of engines, and for a school, it isn;t really a game. I can explore levels, fights sheep, collects bones and nuts, and jump around. I found no objective, no plot, and a severe lack of anything resembling documentation.

The result, this is is a mess, and hardly a game in any real sense of the word. Avoid.

Summary: 1 outta 5 stars for being pretty.

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 08:58 PM

My next game is just going to be a quick little diversionary arcade game called Chromium B.S.U. I expect a review tonight after playing it a bit.

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 08:58 PM

[ c h r o m i u m B.S.U. ] (http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/)

Abe Sargent

09-08-2009, 10:58 PM

Review of Chromium B.S.U.

This is just a quick little free arcade game. It plays like arcade games from the 80s, but has better graphics and sound.

There's not too much I can say about it. It's not designed to take hours of your time, and it is designed to be hard. This is straight from the FAQ:

Q: I keep getting killed. Why is is so difficult?
A: Quitcher whinin', you ninny! It's supposed to be hard! Seriously, Chromium B.S.U. is intended to be a 15 minute adrenaline rush/mental cleanser. Frequent doses of explosions (even your own) can be very therapeutic.

http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/images/chrom-scr-112400b.jpg

You move your ship and fire, and pick up upgrades. As enemy ships pass you, you lose lives...er...I mean spare ships. That's it.

Simple enough, eh?

I enjoyed it enough to not unisntall it, and added it to my casual games directory, for when I want a few minutes of gaming and not more. As such, it will stay installed.

Summary: 2 stars outta 5. It does what it sets out to do, but that goal ain;t high.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 04:56 PM

Of the games I have tried, only Battle for Wesnoth and Chromium BSU are still installed.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 04:57 PM

I also still have Ur-Quan Masters installed, but I've had that baby on every computer I have for a couple of years now.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 08:19 PM

Next up in the queue:

FreeCol

This is a clone of Colonization by MicroProse, and it was released waaay back in 2003.

Find out more here:

FreeCol - Home (http://www.freecol.org/)

The most recent version was released in Aug 2, 2009.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 08:24 PM

From the FreeCol rulebook:

Your Home Country is a European monarchy and colonial power. The original
game featured four playable nations, namely Spain, France, England
and the Netherlands. FreeCol optionally adds Portugal, Denmark, Sweden
and Russia.

Virtually all players agree that the addition of Portugal corrects a glaring
omission of the original game, but the other three European nations are
controversial. Sweden, Denmark and Russia all had colonies or territories
in the Americas, but were either minor colonial powers or arrived very late.
However, as we wished to make multi-player games with up to eight human
players possible, we had to add further nations. We might well change the
selection at some later date, and you can change the selection by editing the
rules yourself.

Each of these countries may have special abilities and different starting
units. In the original game, these abilities and units were tied to particular
nations. FreeCol, however, optionally allows you to select your national
advantage.

At the moment, FreeCol allows the following eight advantages, and also
allows you to select no advantage at all:

No advantage: You start with two Free Colonists and a Caravel, and
no special abilities. This is mainly intended for multi-player games, as
it removes a potential imbalance between players.
The trade advantage: You can buy and sell twice as many goods in
Europe before prices change. You start with two Free Colonists and a
Merchantman.
The cooperation advantage: You generate only half as much native
alarm as the other European nations. You start with a Free Colonist,
a Hardy Pioneer and a Caravel.
The immigration advantage: You need to generate only two thirds as
many crosses as the other European nations in order to attract new
immigrants. You start with two Free Colonists and a Caravel.
The conquest advantage: You capture twice as much treasure and twice
as many converts when destroying native settlement. You start with
a Free Colonist, a Veteran Soldier and a Caravel.
The naval advantage: All your ships can move one tile further than
those of other European nations. You start with two Free Colonists
and a Merchantman.
The building advantage: Your lumberjacks produce two units of lumber
and your carpenters produce two hammers more than those of other
European nations. You start with an Expert Lumberjack, a Master
Carpenter and a Caravel.
The agriculture advantage: Your farmers produce two units of food
more than those of other European nations. You start with an Expert
Farmer, a Free Colonist and a Caravel.
The fur trapping advantage: Your fur trappes produce two units of
fur and your fur traders produce two coats more than those of other
European nations. You start with an Expert Fur Trapper, a Master
Fur Trader and a Caravel.

This will be my favorite part about the game, I think.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 08:33 PM

Other European Countries with colonies in the Americas include:

Duchy of Courland
Germany
Scotland

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 08:39 PM

I like the Building, Trade and Agriculture advantages. I will be playing as Denmark. Let's go with the classic Trade one, because I'm familiar with it, and can see if this game is similar to the Colonization we all know and love and know. And love.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 08:42 PM

Well, i think I just won the game. First turn, found land and Lost City, landed, Fountain of Youth, which means 8 free colonists in Copenhagen immediately. That's waaay too much of an early advantage, so I'm restarting.

Abe Sargent

09-09-2009, 09:42 PM

Having lots of fun so far, very very similar to Colonization, with a few changes, like a founding father taken by one country prevents it being to others.

Lonnie

09-10-2009, 08:17 PM

Good pick. Nice to see they have an OSX version. I don't have a ton of games to play on my MacBook without booting to Vista. I'm going to grab it as well. Unbelievably, I never played the original although I played a ton of Civ.

Really enjoying this Dynasty. Thanks Abe!

Lonnie

09-10-2009, 08:20 PM

Dola, I also noticed Ur-Quan Masters has an OSX version as well.

Abe Sargent

09-10-2009, 08:23 PM

Abe Sargent

09-11-2009, 09:38 PM

Just finished my game and won as the New Denmark Alliance, in 1691. I will have a review soon, but not immediately.

Abe Sargent

09-11-2009, 10:56 PM

Review of FreeCol

Like previous games, this one seems to emulate a previous game in this case Colonization. Therefore, this review will be more concerned with how close it got, as to the overall fun level of the game.

http://www.linux.com/var/slashimages/85004607bfbc7d13ef482d47b4526b1a.png

Several of the changes have already been documented. You can now play multiplayer. You can now play up to 8 nations with up to 8 advantages that you can select. That's really nice. I played with the normal Dutch advantage because I knew it, but I played as the Danish for a bit of a change.

Another change is that founding fathers can only be taken once. The AI is pretty good at grabbing the better ones, so near the last third of my game, the pickings were slim. I grabbed the good ones early, but I was taking crap like Jan de Witt and John Paul Jones at the end just to take someone.

The game's graphics were actually quite good. Looking at pictures of the game before, you can tell they were an area of development. The sound was not great, so I just turned it off and played iTunes.

The game is not exactly Colonization, and there are difference.s There is no autosave, so you have to save regularly and often in case of a crash. I experienced three times the game hung up, each time during the time the AI was moving opponents.

The game engine was close, but again, I noticed differences. I never boycotted a tax, so my taxes ended up in the 76% area, and it was reduced numerous times. That's not even close to realistic or close to the previous game. I was making money, for the last 30 years or so, by trading with Indians instead of Copenhagen. However, it made Thomas Paine the best founding father ever! Once I got him, I was getting founding fathers every 12-15 turns or so, it was awesome. I got a bunch of crappy ones as a result. I don;t think I have ever gotten John Paul Jones before, but I was like, sure, at least I get a boa.t

My strategy was to go for naval power early, and then infrastructure. I went for Pocahontas, then Magellan and Drake, then stuff like Washington, Bolivar and Paine. Once I had both Bolivar and Paine, it was simply a matter of building my colonies up, because I was able to call a revolution.

The game does not show, graphically, the town, which I found disappointing. It also only had a few of the woodcuts from Colonization, just finding lands and establishing a nation, none for Indians, Europeans, Native Attack, Pacific, Fountain of Youth, etc.

Because my taxes jumped so high, my advantage as trade based was rather minor, so for much of the game i was playing without any advantage, except my starting Merchantman.

After getting ready for a revolution, I declared Independance and won shortly after without much need for aid. Washington, + a ton of cannons and veterans from my wars with Spain when the crown offered them to me on the cheap meant each of my five colonial cities had 15 defensive units plus a fortress and Sons of Liberty quite high. My fortresses, frigates and privateers were able to take out about half of the Expeditionary Force, and the rest were easily killed on the ground.

So result - victoire, after three nights of playing.

FreeCol will be staying on my PC for a long time to come.

http://www.slax.org/modules/screenshots/2/2470_big.png

The game was good and I had a lot of fun. If you liked Colonization, then grab this for free and get it up.

Overall: 3.5 outta 5, because it is still a dated game for a bit.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 02:10 AM

The game up next? Planeshift, a multi-platform MMORPG:

PlaneShift - A 3D Fantasy MMORPG (http://www.planeshift.it/index.html)

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 01:12 PM

I d/led the 350 meg file, installed it, and now I;m having problems playing the game in the tutorials. I stopped after a half hour of frustration, and I'll try to come back later.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 01:22 PM

Review of Angband

While we are here, let's do a quick review of Angband, which was recently listed as #8 in my original Top 30 list, and it slid to #9 in my modified one I made a month ago. It's still in the back of the Top Ten, and I love it and its variants more than Civilization, Master of Orion II, The Legend of Zelda, Star Control II, Baldur's Gate, Pokemon, SimCity 4, Half-Life, and more.

So let's take a look under the hood at this very, very free game.

Okay, before I begin this review, I want to point out a couple of things. I like a game with a lot of detail, tons of complexity, and strategies I can learn for months.

Angband is not a good looking game. It's clean, but it's not pretty. However, take a look at the user reviews at GameSpot of this game - 9.4 is very high.

Okay, with that caveat, I present Angband. We'll start with a graphical version:

http://www.thangorodrim.net/graphics/dumps/dump1_small.gif

If you are interested in Angband or variants, you had head over to:

Thangorodrim - The Angband Page (http://www.thangorodrim.net/)

Okay, let's talk about the history of Angband, because it is very important.

In the late seventies, a game developer created a cute little freeware game called Rogue. In Rogue, you are delving through a dungeon and picking up potions, scrolls, wands and more while killing various monsters. The tech at the time was poor, so you were represented with an "@" symbol, and everything else were ASCII characters as well.

In 1985, Robert Koeneke fondly remembered that Rogue game he played years ago, but could not find it. He set out to create a similar game, with a bit of a Tolkien theme, named "Moria." He built the game around Tolkein, with the player decending to level 50 before killing the Balrog.

He remembered Rogue being very difficult, so he handed out early version of his game to friends, and each time they beat the game, he closed off the avenue they used to do it. He intentionally set out to make Moria the hardest game ever developed (and succeeded).

Moria was significantly more advanced than Rogue, with tons of monsters, items, spells, classes, and more added to the game. There was also a village level at the top of the dungeon that had a few shops.

Other writers also wrote Rogue variants, and this genre of game is called a "Roguelike" game (go figure :) ). Most of them share a common element with Rogue - once you die, you are dead. No save game. If you die, you die. There are other Roguelike games like NetHack, ToME and Ragnarok out there.

This creates a ton of suspense. It's tough to go through a game that is designed to be amazingly hard and THEN is unable to load a save game.

As a result, Angband is the hardest game I've ever played. Ever harder than Fragile Allegiance.

Anyways, back to history. In 1990, a couple of guys decided that Moria was not Tolkien enough so they wrote Angband. Angband has come to be viewed as THE roguelike variant to play.

Angband added so many unique ideas to the equation. They added unique items, many from Tolkien, like Angdrast, Sting, Ringil, the Phial of Galadriel, and more.

This added a new element to the top end of the game and added tons of flavor as well.

Next they added unique monsters. Many of these are Tolkienian, like Smaug, Thuringwethil, Saruman, each of the Nazgul, and more. This also added a new element of challenge to the game as you progressively moved into harder and harder terrain.

Then they added tons of things to the dungeons, like a monster pit, which is a room full of a monster type, or vaults, which are large areas chock full of treasure and nasty out of depth monsters (As you delve deeper, more powerful monsters exist, and an out of depth monster is one that is up too high of his average level.)

On this floor, an orc pit is to the left (like I said, a lot of monsters) anda vault is to the right. Both of these are special rooms and to get them both that hgih up in the dungeon is unusual.

http://home.att.net/~bamitchell/angband/grabs/zangband03.gif

The randomizers added out of depth items and monsters upon occasion. There were new elements to add more creativity to your armor (in addition to basics like fire and cold there was now nether and chaos and such).

The game also stretched 100 levels instead of the previous 50.

Angband took everything that was great about Moria and exploded it into many more pieces while also adding tons of new elements to the game.

I prefer playing with the text version, instead of that crappy graphic version. Here's a pic (remember, you are the @)

http://home.att.net/~bamitchell/angband/grabs/angband01.gif

Angband became so popular and definitive that over SIXTY-THREE variants were written by other people as freeware. That's how influential and important Angband became.

Oh, and did you like Diablo? Diablo was just a very, very, very dumbed down Angband with graphics.

Now, as a matter of fact, I prefer one of those variants, ZAngband, to Angband. Z is a game as advanced from Angband as Angband was from Moria (and Z is the most popular variant as well.). Z is based on Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles. It also includes quests, outdoors, tons of classes, a better overhauled magic system, tons of races, mutations, and lots more great stuff. I love it.

However, this is not a review of Z but of Angband, the vanilla version. It may not look like much, I know, but packed in here is one of the best computer games ever made. I spent an entire summer once playing Angband.

Overall - 4 out of 5 stars for most, who care about things like graphics and sound and stuff, 5 outta 5 if you just care about gameplay.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 01:26 PM

8 reviews and counting.

Lonnie

09-12-2009, 03:44 PM

Ditto on the Planeshift, I saw your post so decided to download it myself. I did make it through the tutorial, but found the interface very hard to use. Having to select the NPC and then talk to them (with the NPC tab selected) and they don't understand something they just told you to ask them. Also the chat window scrolling up while you are trying to read what the NPC just said was really frustrating. I was ready to give the graphics a pass, but the UI made it a quick uninstall.

I agree on Angband, one of the best and toughest games I have ever played.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 06:48 PM

Alright, let's go back and try this again

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 07:00 PM

ugh. No more. No more.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 07:08 PM

Review of Planeshift

Ugh. Ouch. Painful. I couldn't even figure out how to get out of the tutorial, the UI is terrible, and the game has some severe faults, so let's take a look.

http://www.planeshift.it/screenshots/ojaveda1.jpg

How does PlaneShift look? Poorly. There are numerous things missing, such as models for about 2/3s of the character selectable races. I chose a lizardlike race with wings, and my body was cut in half accidentally and you could see through me. All of the bugs from 3D games in the mid 90s were here, like seeing through walls when you get too close, or seeing around corners in much the same way.

Sounds - negligible at best.

The game claims it is still alpha, but at 350 megs of downloads, that's a lot of alpha.

The game's UI, as has been mentioned is awful. If I attack a rat, and I am too far away, it just tells me I am too far away instead of moving me toward it or anything. You have to get really close, and I can;t even see it on my screen anymore unless I move the screen down significantly.

You have to click on an NPC< then bring up an interaction window, then bring up the NPC tab, then manually type in your command, in order to get them to respond. So, if I want to talk to one, I have to click on in, bring up the window, hit the tab, and then type in Hi. How stupid.

http://www.planeshift.it/screenshots/jayose1.jpg

With problematic animations, UI, graphics, and such, I decided to call it a day. There could be a great quest system under the hood or something. I'm not going to bother to find it. Even after reading the manual, I'm no clearer on how to proceed than I was before.

Overall - 1 out of 5.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 08:29 PM

The next game to play, UFO: Alien Invasion

UFO: Alien Invasion (http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/)

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 09:16 PM

There is no question tht UFO: AI is a different game than X-Com.

Abe Sargent

09-12-2009, 10:34 PM

One of the things I like is the interesting maps, at least so far. I just did a mission on a map that was a military convoy with a narrow road, trucks, and high hills to either side. It was hard, but it was interesting.

BYU 14

09-13-2009, 01:44 PM

These reviews of old got me nostalgic, so I went looking for Darklands and found it at Classic PC Games - Abandonware & Classic Games - Free DOS, Commodore 64, Amiga & Spectrum Games & Emulators (http://www.classic-pc-games.com/)

Would love to hear your take on this if you have an interest.

the_meanstrosity

09-14-2009, 06:17 AM

Great read Abe. I've played nethack before, but never tried zangband. I may have to give it a go.

Abe Sargent

09-15-2009, 06:10 PM

Hopefully I'll wrap up UFO: AI soon, I'm a bit disappointed with some of it

Abe Sargent

09-15-2009, 06:40 PM

Yeah, I think I'm done. Expect a review soon.

Next game, and one you might not have known is supposedly now available for free:

MechCommander 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d790cde-c3e5-46be-b3a5-729581269a9c&DisplayLang=en

Abe Sargent

09-16-2009, 12:35 AM

Just finished tutorials and whatnot,

Abe Sargent

09-16-2009, 02:33 PM

Review of UFO: Alien Invasion

One of many games to try and mimic the success of X-Com : UFO Defense, UFO; AI is a game designed by fans. The game is not finished yet, similar to many other free games.

The games pits you and your people against an alien invasion, just like in X-Com. You have an UFOPaedia, a GeoScape screen, funds coming from various countries, bases needing to be build, UFOs needing to be shot down, terror sites, and so forth.

http://ufoai.ninex.info/gallery/albums/ingame-screenshots/geoscape2.jpg

The GeoScape

Okay, so if you are familar with XCom, you may want to kn ow some things. How does this game differ from XCom?

First of all, the music for this game is pretty good. It;s easy to make creepy one or two note ambient music for a game like this, but they did well, so kudos there.

Secondly, some of the graphics are stand out good. For example, I loved the design of the alien ships:

http://ufoai.ninex.info/gallery/albums/maps/snowmap01.jpg

However, some pieces of art fall very flat, particularly characters and equipment. Some pieces of equipment, like grenades, looked like they had been done in MS Paint. Not attractive at all. So the graphics are very uneven.

The gameplay is mostly the same, but they make a few changes. One is that you have to build UFO Hangers and then bring the captured UFO back, and analyze it. That's a cool idea.

There are a lot of things that don;t work. The tanks from X-Com are in the game in several places, but do not actually work and cannot be built/purchased/researched. My base was never attacked, and I never found an enemy base.

I played the game for a while, and I discovered every alien species early, and there are not as many as previous games, so its gets old fast. In fact, there are just four alien species, and one is a construct of a Spider which is vey weak in combat despite its description as a mega killer. I also only found a few alien crafts, maybe just two or three.

I couldn;lt figure out how to bring back a crash UFO, or even one that landed and I got my people there to hit, so I was never able to bring one back. Perhaps that has not even been fixed yet. Until you do, a large branch of the research tree is unavailable to you, so I played the game for a few days, had five bases, but was unable to do a lot of research and stuff, so I am stuck in the game. I try to figure out another crash or landing, and I sim, quickly, a month, two months no activity registered. Frustrated, I leave the game.

There are some serious problems, from uneven graphics to gameplay issues and either a bug or a turned off feature that prevented me from even getting close to finishing the game. However, some graphics are nice, you have some interesting maps, the sound is enjoyable, and it is a nice flashback to XCom for a while until frustration sets in.

Overall: 2 outta 5.

Abe Sargent

09-16-2009, 11:05 PM

So far, in MC2, I've had fun, but I also had a severe graphical glitch and a CTD in mission 3.

Abe Sargent

09-17-2009, 09:40 PM

The game is missing the cinematics.

Abe Sargent

09-18-2009, 03:27 PM

Looks like there is a bug with some pilots losing their veteran skill when they become elite.

Abe Sargent

09-19-2009, 12:42 AM

Just beat the game. Expect a review soon.

Abe Sargent

09-19-2009, 03:29 AM

Review of MechCommander 2

Despite my admitted love for all things BattleTech, I have never played this game before. So, let's talk about MechCommander for a bit.

To say this is a Real-time strategy is to say that Europa Universalis 2 is RTS. Sure, both are strategy, and both have time progress without turns, but neither is really a RTS in the since of Warcraft, Starcraft and other games.

MechCommander 2 is more Real Time Tactics. You move Mechs around, and attack people. Where you go, how you go, and more, is all up to you.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/screenshots/gs/feature_previews/mechcommander2/mechcommander2_790screen006.jpg

My major graphical issue is that the landscape often had the mid-90s feel to it, where the graphics for the ground looked electronic and fake next to much more realistic graphics for items, buildings, and such. Since the game was released in 2001, that is a good complaint, because even then it would have been fake feeling.

The sound is fine at first, but quickly wears on you.

The videos did not play in my free version from MicroSoft. As such, it would be really hard for someone who does not know the BTech universe to know what is go9ing on, especially when you switch sides suddenly. I watched the videos on youtube, but you really shouldn;t have to do that.

I had two crashes to desktop when hitting quicksave during a mission, so I stopped hitting quicksave. The result was that I could not use that function, but I never failed a mission, so there is that.

In fact, the game was quite easy, and I'd recommend a bit harder difficultly level.

http://pcmedia.ign.com/media/reviews/image/mc2015_640w.jpg

The game progresses as a set of three scenarios. The engine itself is quite easy. You move your mechs around, and you can jump if you have jump jets. You can run, walk, jump, shoot and capture certain buildings. Capture the turret control and now the guns will fight your enemies instead of you, capture the game control and you can open up the gates tied to it, etc.

In between missions, you can buy and sell mechs, and equip them. This is a lot more simple than some previous BattleTech on screen games, but it keeps many of the BTech mechanics such as heat. Gone are weight restrictions and heat scale. You have to fit weapons into critical slots, and every mech has different shaped crit slots. The result is that the weapons do not have weight, so one major factor is removed.

If you played MechWarrior 2, you might remember having to deal with overheating, and perhpas shutting down, or hitting a override to keep goign and risking your engine overloaded and blowing up. Here, that is not the case. You have to be able to disperse all of the heat your weapons make, so you run cool. There is no heat making weapons, and heat is no longer a factor in quick fire weapons.

AS a result, you will quickly learn how to maximize your mechs, and the large diversity of legitimate builds from the BTech iuniverse no longer exists here. Here, you laugh at how useless Flamers are, because they can;t add heat to a mech and cause it to go overheat. Here you laugh at how sucky Machine Guns are because they do not weigh half the amount of a medium laser,when there is no weight here. No ammo explosions, a really dumbed down BTech.

And yet, it IS still BTech. Urbanmechs suck, some mechs are good, others are better, and so forth. Now, its characterization is often a bit off, there were not clan mechs and clan weapons running rampant even in 3063 on Carver V in the numbers represented in the game, I guarantee it.

Anyway, you work for Steiner at first fighting bandits, before realizing that Liao is behind the bandits. Then, after a few fights against Liao, your contract is up, and you sign with Liao, fighting Steiner and Davion on Carver V. Then you are abandoned by Liao to die, and you switch to the citizens of Carver V and Davion to fight Liao/Steiner.

The game does not desribe what is going on in the backstory, so allow me to do so. Carver V was once a planet run by Liao, of the Capellan Confederation. Then, decades before the game begins, Carver V is one of dozens of worlds captured by Davion, the Federated Suns, in the Fourth Succession War. Hanse Davion would marry Melissa Steiner, and the Steiner and Davion nations and families were joined, which is how the Steiner and Davion characters in the game served together. After Hanse and Melissa died, their son ruled the new Federated Commonwealth, both realms. Soon thereafter, he tried to trick the Free Worlds League (Marik) and enraged them, and the FWL and heir new allies, Liao (Capellan Confederation) launched massive guerilla and combat attacks against areas lost to the Federated Commonwealth nations. This resulted in a large number of worlds losing their allegiance to any house, as the individual worlds had factions that vied for various masters. Also, the princes sister takes this opportunity to seize the throne of the Lyran (Steiner) have of th eFederated Commonwealth, resplitting the FedCom.

As a result, the world of Carver V is one such world in the area that is now claimed by many nations. There are pro-Steiner, pro-Davion, and pro-Liao factions in various areas, cities and continents. That's the set up for the game.

http://www.novomilenio.inf.br/ano01/0109acd2.jpg

So, overall, it was fun, but without great graphics, video, some sound length, and a ctd bug. Not the best ever.

Overall - 2.5 outta 5

Abe Sargent

09-19-2009, 01:44 PM

Okay, as of right now, the following games have been reviewed:

Battle for Wesnoth - Turn-Based Wargame
MechCommander 2 - Real-Time Tactics
Planeshift - MMORPG
LinCity-NG - City Builder
OpenCol - Turn-Based 4X
Dink Smallwood - Action RPG
UFO: Alien Invasion - Turn Based Tactics
Angband - RPG
The Ur-Quan Masters - Action/Adventure
Yo Frankie! - Platformer
Chromium B.S.U. - Arcade

That's a solid number in these past two weeks. I don;t know what I will do next, we'll see.

Abe Sargent

09-19-2009, 01:47 PM

I really enjoyed playing MC2, Battle for Wesnoth, and OpenCol. I also love Angband and Ur-Quan Masters. Getting a chance to play Dink Smallwood, and UFO: AI was also really grand.

I'm starting to figure out that, among games that have never been released commercially, Battle for Wesnoth is the Rolls Royce. Sure, MechCommander 2 is smoother, but it was released commercially. So was Ur-Quan Masters, or even OpenCol which is an attempt to remake the original commercial game. B4W seems like the big guy among freeware.

Greyroofoo

09-20-2009, 02:12 AM

I really loved MechCommander 2. I also loved the first one.

The movies do explain a lot of the back story. It's generally done in parody of the Mclaughlin group.

Abe Sargent

09-22-2009, 12:35 AM

I know which game I'm doing next, but no spoilers.

Abe Sargent

09-22-2009, 08:22 PM

Playing MC2 got me back in a BattleTech mood, so my next dynasty is here, and I will review the game I am playing it with at some point in time for this dynasty.

The BattleTech Dynasty: 3039 - Front Office Football Central (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=74677)

Abe Sargent

02-06-2010, 10:18 PM

Tonight I am going to download and try out NAEV.

NAEV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAEV)

Abe Sargent

02-06-2010, 10:25 PM

Oh, and btw, expect me to add to this dynasty in the next few days. I'm pretty bored with games and looking for something new. Let's see if any of the next games in my free queue can spice things up a bit.

Abe Sargent

02-06-2010, 11:37 PM

The lack of sound is quite annoying

Abe Sargent

02-07-2010, 04:51 AM

Review of NAEV

Hello and welcome back to the next review in our dynasty. Tonight, for about 6 hours, I have played NAEV and I have a full review coming.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/NAEV-screenshot2.png

In this simple game, based on Escape Velocity from the mid-90s, is a trading and combat sim. It is in the early stages supposedly, but I used the most up to date release - 0.42, and experienced no bugs nor any crashes or anything, so that's nice compared to a lot of free software.

You pilot your ship through various sectors in the universe and trade goods, do trade missions, and fight ships. Some sectors are different than others, belonging to other factions, not having planets, and so forth. However, multi=factions really aren;t supported well although they do get different ships and such.

There are a few quests you can pick up in bars, but not that many. The universe is smaller than you'd think, and after about 15-20 minute,s you've explored most of it. Then it's just trading and fighting inside of it.

The combat feels a lot like Grand Melee from Star Control, and the trading feels like TradeWars 2002. The result is a game that knows what it wants to do, and does just that, nothing else.

The fighting doesn;t have a lot of bells and whistles, the tradings has something like five trades goods (ore, food, luxuries, machinery and medicine). I fight it astounding that in today;s day an age, people still think it acceptable to set Sci-Fi trade goods by such generic names and categories.

There is no sound at all, despite sound options in the menu. Silly.

I have never played Escape Velocity, so I cannot tell you if it was amazing, awesome, adequate, or a big ol' miss, and I certainly can;t tell you how much NAEV may or may not have hit it.

I can tell you that I am done with the game. At this stage,m it's simply too simple. I got new weapons, equipment, ships, and such, but the game felt too simple. Now, add in real differences in the factions, more quests, and add things like space aliens, tech development, base building or something else to it to give it legs, and you might have the beginnings of something.

Current rating 1.5 stars outta 5, due to low graphics, lack of sound, simple mechanics, small universe, limited quest system, small number of trade goods in a TRADE and FIGHT sim, etc.

Abe Sargent

02-07-2010, 12:18 PM

Trying to figure out what game to do next

Abe Sargent

02-07-2010, 01:49 PM

Okay, next game is Widelands.

Widelands.org (http://wl.widelands.org/)

Abe Sargent

02-07-2010, 02:36 PM

It's got a very Settlers 1 and 2 feel to it

Abe Sargent

02-07-2010, 04:17 PM

Just had my first Crash to Desktop at the beginning of tutorial scenario #3

Abe Sargent

02-08-2010, 05:56 PM

Review of Widelands

Well, here is the second review of the renewed dynasty. I played Widelands all day yesterday, until 1 am. That's roughly 8 hours minus two for various times during the Super Bowl, although I did play for about half of it.

http://wl.widelands.org/wlmedia/wlscreens/screens/Build13/Barbarians.jpeg

Widelands is an attempt to have a renewed Serf City aka Settlers game for the modern computer. It is completely free and for someone who played Serf City and loved it way back when, there is a nostalgia value, to be sure.

In Widelands, you play in real time, managing an economy and numerous items by building buildings. You build a well to get water. You build either a Coal Mine or a Charcoal maker to make coal. You get stone from a Quarry Hut you built. Then you build a Lime Kiln and you can turn all three into Grout, which is used for more complex building construction. Coal is also used to make Gold and Iron into ores, and it is used in smithies of various sorts to make tools, axes, or helmets.

Similarly, wood is used in a Wood Hardener to make Blackwood, which is used as a construction material. It itself is used in construction too. It goes to a Charcoal Maker to make Coal.

There are a lot of intricate items and buildings making tons of goods and using them. Sometimes, they don;t make sense. Which is better for upgraded miners, snacks or rations? The game was obviously translated into English from another language, and sometimes there are some issues with grammar.

The game has a lot of the problems Settlers had like the lack of a speed up button. You are constantly going at such a slow pace and you always want to speed it up. You could finish a scenario that takes two hours in a half hour, and it always feels like you are wasting time.

Also, the military engine is hella clunky. You expand territory by building military buildings and then send your soldiers to fight their military buildings, and then later, if you win, their's burns and they lose whatever buildings that were in the zone of borders that just shrunk. In other words, it takes forever to expand and move.

Plus, the bigger your city/town the harder it is on the infrastructure, and by the time you have built most of the buildings, and multiples of many of those, you are so freakin huge that it takes you foreever to expand outward militarily. Plus, you can only send out nearby soldiers, and they stay in the biuilding, so you are constantly building new military buildings to leapfrog your soldiers into them so you can attack, and then their territory is too far away to attack or bring your soldiers to bear on, so you have to expand out to there, which takes longer....etc.

So, they got the good stuff from Serf City, but all of the bad too, and that's not a great thing folks. Especially in this post-Roller Coaster Tycoon era.

I did have three crashes to desktop, but the game saved right by it each time, so I lost practically nothing. The game does have multiplayer functions, and there are three different skins for buildings. It has fewer animations for figures than I'd like, and many look very similar, like Hunters looking like construction workers. My favorite animation is by teh Gamekeeper who releases animals into the wild so that your Hunter can always find meat.

It was fun to play through a few scenarios and remind myself why the game was great, but it also reminded me of the sever limitations it had.

Overall Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars. Play only for nostalgia

Abe Sargent

02-08-2010, 11:21 PM

The next game will be C-Evo, a free Civ clone that has different design principles.

C-evo, Empire Building Game (http://www.c-evo.org/)

Abe Sargent

02-08-2010, 11:22 PM

The principles:

Design Principles

Principle 1: Low Risk. The basic idea is correction, not revolution. The playing experience with Civ II is used to overcome its design problems. New and overturning ideas will hardly be implemented, because this would only lead to another unbalanced game.

Principle 2: Fun by Challenge. Computer games get to bore after a while - that's a fact. The reason is that they remain the same - that's a common assumption, resulting in a stream of new games and massively extended sequels, each trying to temporarily suppress the boredom again. Call it fun by novelty. This project is based on a completely different assumption, induced by a few old games outside the computer world, which never change but are usually played for a lifetime. The problem of computer games might not be that they don't change but that they are bad - bad design, poor AI, false priorities set, constructs of perfect style and overwhelming size but not of intelligence. The challenge declines rapidly after a winning strategy is recognized. One wins every game with much to work and little to think. Doing this better should be possible.

Principle 3: AI Liberation. Empire building games are typically asymmetric. They are built around the human player as their center, with some pseudo-AI mainly having the job to keep him amused and to make the whole thing a realistic simulation. C-evo, in contrast, is a competition of equals. AI has no jobs, because that would reduce its strength. AI just has a goal, which is the same as the player's goal: to win. All are playing by the same symmetric rules, no matter if human or AI. Frequently made suggestions show that many players do not fully realize the consequences of this principle (which is forgivable because the games they're used to are far away from it.) Particularly, there is no way to direct the behavior of the AI - the AI is as free as the player is. Rules and AI are strictly separated. Some examples for ideas that are not compatible with this principle:

* A wonder that improves other nations' attitude towards the owning nation. As hardly as a human player would ever change his opinion about another player because a rule tells him to do, as hardly would true AI.
* Democratic and fundamentalistic states being more aggressive against each other than two states usually are. Same thing - AI is not under the game's command!
* Use of certain methods or weapons (like nuclears) resulting in international contempt. Same thing again.
* A diplomatic option for the human player to ask AI allies for support in his war campaign, expecting true effort. AI to subordinate to the player's plans is as ridiculous as the player to give up his strategy and instead help one AI fight the other.

Principle 4: Focus on Strategy. It's the nature of a Civ-style game to be a simulation and a strategy game at the same time. This double-ambition causes serious conflicts in game design and the need for compromise. While Civ I and Civ II chose a middle course, newer Civ sequels are clearly directed towards simulation. C-evo gives priority to strategy, which means:

* The game is played by the players, not by itself. Everything happening is happening because one of the players does it or caused it, not because the game decides it's time for a surprise.
* You can't win the game by hitting Enter a hundred times and accepting everything that some advisors are advising. C-evo is a game, not a movie.
* Elements that are irrelevant for the game's end are out of place.
* Rules of the game that represent a mathematical effect are specified as a formula, not using nebulous phrases ("more", "less", "better").
* Main goals are maximum challenge and minimum boring busywork. Realism is welcome but does not take precedence over these two aspects.
* Poor players will not be helped in order to keep the balance of power. (Yes, this means most games are decided before they end formally, but that's natural and common to almost all good games.)
* The fun you'll have playing the game without reading the manual is comparable to the fun it is to move pieces on a chessboard without knowing the rules of chess.

Principle 5: Compact Rule Set. A bigger game is not necessarily a better game. Additional elements can damage a game just as much as they can contribute to it. C-evo tries to keep its rule set small. Rules that would make the game more ornate but not bring new aspects of strategy will not be implemented, even if they'd add to realism.

Principle 6: Balance of Strategy and Micro Management. The game should remain small enough so that micro management can still be an important part of it. C-evo does not try to split into several levels where the lower ones are so boring that it takes automatics to keep the game bearable. The goal is to make the micro management interesting - or to remove it. To hide it away from the player with the help of macro management is the worst solution (though sometimes necessary).

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 08:19 PM

Review of C-Evo

When I loaded up this Civish game, I found many things both familiar and unfamiliar. Based off Civ II, the developer has spent over a decade polishing the game. He has taken the original game and made changes with things like units, money, and most importantly, the AI.

http://www.c-evo.org/shot1.jpg

For example, when I first began, I thought I was playing Civ. The Wonders are virtually the same. I was playing the Phoenicians and ran into the Russians early. My first choices for tech including The Wheel, Warrior Code, Alphabet, Map Making, Bronze Making, Pottery, etc. It looked very much like Civ.

And yet, there are a lot of things here that are not Civ. A damaged ship loses movement. The strongest unit always wins, and will always take the same damage from attacking that defender, no matter how many times you load a save game. The starting citysize is 2 and settlers take away 2 people. If you wait to research map Making until after things like Bridge Building, Engineering and Construction like I did, it's cost increases as well, it does not remain a cheap research. You can also build canals that allow you to move ships through.

Here's a fun change: when you get an advance that previously would give you a new military unit, instead you get things you can build with a unit. So, when I researched Horsemanship, I got extra mobility as an option. Then I can instead research a unit of my own making, and include things in it like speed, attack and defense. I research it, and it becomes my unit, not anyone else's. I can then trade the design to other nations. That's very cool.

If I trade for a tech, i still have to research it, but at a reduced cost, in order to incorporate it into my nation.

As a reminder from the above post, the AI in this game is trying to win, not trying to be an obstacle. I played through once and was crushed by the Romans. I played again and before long, the Russians and Japanese were easily outstripping me in economy and technology by 1750. They just ignored me, because I was no threat. (On easy level too)

Because they are trying to win, they do things to advance that. For example, there are no wonders that increase and nothing that decreases your relations with them, except for actions and diplomacy you and they take. You have to tell them you are leaving and make sure they want nothing more in negotiations, instead of just closing the screen. They won;t sacrifice their nation to help you in a war unless they deem the opponent to be a major threat to themselves, otherwise they will sit by and let you get smoked.

There are no special units or play style for the AI nations, they simply play to win, which makes a lot of sense. During its time, China has been expansionistic, diplomatic and cordial, massive Xenophobic, and so forth. Which attitude should win out in the game? Any choice you or I made would be simply to provide an obstacle for the player, and not to reflect the difficulty of facing a real opponent.

Everyone is working towards the goal of building spacecraft parts. There is just one goal. If there were more, then the AI would always take the easy path while you might take the longer, more convoluted one. Therefore, there are no victories but planetary colonization.

http://www.c-evo.org/shot3.jpg

Oh, there are no nukes, because, as the writer said, the reason people have not used nukes in real life is ethics, not strategy, and there is no way to duplicate that restraint in a strategy game.

There are still governments, zones of control, borders, trade, units, and all of the stuff that you gained in Civ, only some things are tweaked, and others are overhauled.

It was fun to play through a few games, and unlike the recent games, this one may stay on my harddrive for a bit.

If you find the game a bit too challenging, you can d/l other AIs from the main site as adjuncts for the games. You can also d/l a variety of mods from things like graphics to maps.

The game advertises itself as nothing random except the map generator. I'm sure that appeals to some players, because it makes Civ Chess or Checkers. I prefer the randomness of games like Magic that make it more interesting, so this is not my flavor as much.

The graphics are acceptable for a game that debuted in 1996, but no great shakes for today. The sound? I barely noticed any - there's no music.

Anyway, for fans of Civ looking for a nice diversion, or who love the idea of a tough AI and a deterministic system will love this game. For me, it's okay for a bit, but I;m sure I will eventually delete it from my hard drive.

Overall review - 2 outta 5 stars

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 08:28 PM

It seems like most of the free games out there fall into one of five categories:

1). Games that are trying to recreate the game, either virtually or literally, of an old game they like that will run on modern machines. Examples include the Ur-Quan Masters, FreeCol and Widelands.
2). Games that were formerly a commercial release and now are put out there for free. Examples include the Ur-Quan Masters, MechCommander 2 and Dink Smallwood.
3). Quick games that are unique, but meant for casual gaming. Examples include puzzle and arcade games, such as Chromium BSU.
4). Games that are an homage or pastiche of a genre conquered by one or more franchises, that want to improve or make changes. Examples include LinCity NG and C-Evo.
5). New and sometimes unique games that will always be in alpha or beta stages with severe problems like PlaneShift.

You can totally combine categories, like UFO: AI is sorta between 1 and 4 while also being 5.

What seems really, really rare is The Battle for Wesnoth. Sure, there are a few games out there that it has similarities with, but it is not trying to be anything. It is not trying to be a better Civ, a new SimCity, an updated Elite, a quick casual game or a formerly commercial game now getting another day in the sun.

That makes it quite rare.

The longer I go the more i see it as the gold standard of free games.

So many free games are still in alpha, beta and may never be finished. Then there are free puzzle or arcade type games, but I've done one of those already, and I'm not really interested in more right now.

The number of quality free games is diminishing. Do you know how many free RPGs are out there other than Roguelikes? Do you know how many more free strategy and/or simulation games are out there that are not Civ, SimCity, Elite, or Transport Tycoon clones? You know, I could d/l and try out Micropolis, built from SimCity the original, or FreeCiv the free civilization clone, etc.

It's getting a little tough. Now, what I could do is switch up genres. I count roughly 12 first person shooters that are free and not commercials with open sources like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem 3D and Quake 1, 2 or 3, which are all open source now. However, I don;t really like FPS as a genre anymore. Boring. After Half-Life, the genre sort of stopped getting better and simply got prettier. It's like real time strategies post-Starcraft.

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 08:41 PM

NAEV was based on Escape Velocity, and EV was based in part on Elite. I think I might try to do another of those games that are free like Vega Strike or Oolite.

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 10:08 PM

Vega Strike is next because it has better graphics that Oolite

Vega Strike - Home (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/)

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 10:14 PM

423 megs? I'm impressed by the d/l size.

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 11:41 PM

Early reaction from Vega Strike is that this game is really interesting. It's a first person space flight sim, with combat, moving, and such taking you around the system, trading and fighting and doing missions that are ultimately tied to a campaign, various races, etc. The graphics are quite good for a free game.

Abe Sargent

02-09-2010, 11:53 PM

Awesome, you can actually hire wingmen in various bases and such, and they fly on missions with you, and you can order them around. Like Wing Commander, only you hire and tell them what to do. They have different skills, ships, and such, and therefore different prices.

You can also stock fighters and control them and/or use them as wingmen for large cargo vessels you might fly, if you choose that route.

Abe Sargent

02-12-2010, 04:10 PM

Review of Vega Strike

In spirit, Vega Strike is much like NAEV and other games that have followed and yet emulated Elite. You start with a low value ship, and then trade or fight your way slowly up the ladder with missions, and trades and such, until you have enough credits for a new ship.

Then you can choose to specialize in a better fighting ship or better cargo ship. You buy gadgets for your ship, take on harder missions to make more money, and so forth. The weapons and many other things are customizable.

Meanwhile, there may or may not be a campaign with campaign missions to worry about as well. In NAEV and many other games - no campaign. In Vega Strike? Campaign.

Of all of the games I've review, there is no question that Vega Strike has the best graphics. It is also a full gig after installation and has a download of over 400 megs for those with slower connections.

http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Games/Screenshot-VegaStrike.png

You launch from sector to sector, and run into alien races (one of which is hostile), and various factions (two of which are hostile). Your choices during the game can piss off more people or not.

You fly about a sector, going from various pints of interest to others. Eventually, you can buy a warp drive and move to other sectors, trading, fighting and more.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users/hellcatv/fin10.png

Now, I did have some problems with the game. First of all, it took entirely too long to move from point A to point B in a system. it may take 3-5 minutes to fly to Atlantis from the Mining Station and another to return. It felt entirely too long. I shouldn't have to wait 10 minutes or more to complete one set of trades. I got a faster ship as my first upgrade to compensate.

Also, this is a game in which a dynamic economy is really vital, and no such luck. I would like to see veents like droughts or equipment shortages you can take advantage of, but once you bring enough food to the mining base, it's prices level off for more until they consume it and have needs again. That would really make the game better.

Dogfighting can be done with a joystick, the keyboard, or two different set up for Mouse - mouse glide and mouse something els.e After playing with them, I liked Mouse Glide the best. (I do not have a joystick)

There are a lot of keyboard commands you will need to print out a list of what they all do.

Time to pick up the game is about 60 minutes.

The sound was pretty solid.

This game is a lot more than you normally get from a free game. It's deeper and way more detailed. There is no reason not to check it out if you are interested.

Overall Score - 3 outta 5

That's pretty high for my free games.

PS - there are two major mods you need to be aware of. Vega Strike is turned into a remake of Wing Commander: Privateer in one and Vega style Star Trek in another. Here are screens from those.

http://grandfiles.com/megascreenshots/games/simulation/privateer-remake.jpg

http://privateer.sourceforge.net/images/screenshot-5-kilrathi-gothri-explosion.png

http://macgames.jp/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/vegatrek.jpg