They actually removed THQ from the credits: Warhammer 40k Space Marine

My personal relationship with Warhammer, and more specifically 40k, is a cliche tale. Almost generic. I played back in the late 90s, probably like 98 or somewhere around there, when the game was in its second edition and I have no idea what fantasy was like. There's a legion of people out there like me, who played a year or two, had some fun with the game then moved on with their life. In the same way there's no end of thirty something Transformers fans like me - manchildren who reconnected with the franchise at some point - there's no end of late twenties to late thirties dudes who remember the good times with Warhammer.

40k is patently ridiculous, and ridiculous with patents (look up the stuff about Games Workshop vs Chapterhouse, it's absurdity in action) but that is a big part of its charm. When done well, it carries itself with just enough of a smirk that the insanity doesn't register as the capricious nihilism and you can still, well, have fun with it. It's sort of like a crazy heavy metal van. Done well, and it's ridiculously cool, done poorly and much like the van it just feels ... Like bad things are coming.

Relic on the most part had a pretty good, but not great, handle on 40k. There were a lot of points where it largely felt in Dawn of War like they wanted to put their own spin on things but couldn't quite get there. Relic might still have the GW license now, I don't really know, given their wikipedia article is out of date and who largely cares. Games Workshop itself is now something of a joke, coasting on that positive energy but making no further gains as a company. I'm sure in 15 years whoever is building the best "formative years" brand will be coasting by as they are. Maybe that's privateer press, maybe not.

ya I noticed

As an old man thinking about getting back into painting miniatures, I can tell you Games Workshop is priced to the point of absurdity, but anyway, back to vidya games.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is Relic's attempt to branch out into other genres than just endless rehashes of RTS scenarios that, I think, sort of fell out of favor with the rise of the crippling might that is f2p MOBA games. You can sort of respect the attempt, innately, but you can also seriously begin to wonder how it's going to go.

Ya know you want to do more than stare: 2013 in review

As with last year, this is a set of mini reviews summarizing my recollections of games I played over the course of 2013. Unlike last year, I'm going to be really frank about something: I don't necessarily recall, with perfect accuracy, how I felt about the games while I was playing. This is more or less a summary of how I feel about them a week, a month or almost a full year afterwards. This is after digestion, these are the lasting impressions.

I divide this into four categories, which work in the following somewhat conflicting ways. Category A is the games I think, regardless of your tastes, you should give a serious look at and try because I really enjoyed them. Category B, inversely, are game I think you should try only if you like the genre they're in, but otherwise I felt pretty highly about them. Category C are games I liked or sort of like, but I'm not really recommending unless you're already inclined towards them, or I had problems with getting them running. Category D lastly are games I just stopped playing and/or can't really see personally ever telling anyone to play.

You may notice this review system is entirely subjective. While I do my best to be impartial about things that aren't objective in nature, the truth of the matter is, you're going to have to look at my reviews and decide if you agree with me or don't. If you do, then my opinion is worthwhile, but if you don't maybe you like the games I don't like, and vice versa. As an aside, where I put my experiences does not interrelate with where you put yours. If you really liked a game and I didn't, it doesn't matter, it just means we disagree and you can probably look at the review to figure out why. I get hung up on stuff that doesn't matter to most people, but I do tend to talk about why.

To me, that's the idea, to talk about flaws and facets, and then maybe other people can figure out from my subjective opinions how they'd mesh with their subjective opinions. Because ultimately we're not all that objective, except I will say I'm a fanboy of absolutely goddamn nothing and that's my thing.

Also these reviews are not, as with last year, of games entirely from MY 2013. Many of them are older, but some are more recent, but I feel like hey - how often do you get to read a review of complete games years later, or compared to modern titles? The point here is to discuss if this $5 title is still worth your money four years after its release, and how shit ages, and if we have time how many donkeys power uPlay.
 

Better than expected: Sacred Citadel

I picked up Sacred Citadel for less than a dollar when I grabbed the Deep Silver Humble Bundle. The game was recently released, but also didn't review especially well and I guess was considered something of a right off by the publisher for it to be slammed into the bundle. (right off? write off? Am I making a pun? Yes, unless you hate puns, then gosh no that's a typo) The bundle also had like, Risen 2 which I am willing to try for a dollar, and Sacred 2 which I've heard is actually pretty ok? So Sacred Citadel was just some like, throwaway 60~ metacritic game I almost didn't bother to even add to my steam list. But I did, since you get XP for your steam level and blah blah the metagame.

Sacred Citadel is a brawler, standard 2d style. I haven't played a brawler in a couple years, other than trying out Golden Axe on an emulator and finding it a bit too stiff to be enjoyable. Sacred Citadel is, I think, very close to Golden Axe, other than having what I imagine are more recent innovations to the genre. I am fully aware "more recent" can extend back something like twenty years here, yes sir.

In terms of presentation Sacred Citadel kinda surprised me out of the gate with its music. The music and game sounds are actually quite good, nothing too epic but suitably catchy to mix in with the gameplay. The art style as well is quite pleasing, it's very rounded and simple, but I'm a massive fan of 2d sprite style work and this is one of the nicest. I can understand that this is a matter of my subjective tastes, but when I'm playing a relaxing pick up game I like the screen to feel comfortable and visually simplistic.

There's lots of variety in the visuals as well - the game takes place across quite a few different landscapes, although they are mostly just a level plane with a pretty background, you do see some set pieces and the odd bit of jumping puzzle. The game also has a sense of humor and isn't some serious production, with a campy goofiness to it that definitely works with the art style and the game's status as a punchy brawler. If you want to just pick up a game to play for 5-10 minutes, I think Sacred Citadel does a pretty solid job of being a light hearted murdering spree. Some of the enemy designs are really creative and neat to watch in action, lots of personality in the art style.

Combat is - And now we get into the downsides - Pretty hit or miss. The controls are very simple and on the most part quite responsive, but your character can feel a bit floaty. For one, a button mash issues a combo, and your character (to the best of my knowledge, I only tried out two) doesn't really seem to care if there's anything to hit. As with many games the developers decided your character wants to move with the button mash sometimes, so you end up wondering where the idiot is going when you come out of a dodge roll and turn the wrong direction. The other issue is that enemies tend to knock you around nonstop, and you don't feel very steady on your feet. Enemies also have massive amounts of health as you get further into the game.

I don't really understand the appeal of being stunlocked all the time, so you end up feeling like you're supposed to dodge around and block a bunch. That's fine, but between the slightly off controls you end up with a great deal of wiggling around, not having fun. Enemies don't take well to being led, either, but then go down a bit too easy once they do. This might be a product of playing a Shaman, who is a light looking lass in a pink leotard. I don't know, because the last time I switched characters, it reset my other character and I don't plan on going back through the game with everyone if I can't level them in parallel. No idea why this is missing, maybe it isn't, but I can't figure out how I reset my ranger otherwise.

Regardless - Enemies have way too much health for this, probably as a component of the leveling system but I've found in some boss fights I end up fighting the added spawns what feels like nonstop, since you can't really get in to punch them down in the middle of also dodging a boss. There's also a couple enemy attacks that just shouldn't be in the game - one of the act 3 enemies yells and tosses a grenade into the air. It doesn't do much damage I don't believe, nor is it aimed at you all that well, but it's very hard to visually track in a busy screen and it knocks you down.Again, and again, and again. Especially when you're trying to focus on their caster bodies, who also knock you down...

Outside of stunlock, hit boxes are a little off on a couple enemies, and there's maybe too many lines of depth. Some aerial enemies can be oddly precise to hit while other foes are not. It lends a somewhat slapstick feel to the game and while it does sound nitpicky you need to bear in mind brawling is about all you do in this game. They really should have nailed down the feel of it. Getting knocked and bonked around the screen just doesn't work for me.

The voice acting in the game is outright terrible, though I'm not entirely sure that isn't intentional. It's very campy and silly, and the story is also pretty campy so maybe that's what they were going for. It doesn't bother me and I did chuckle here or there, so I'm not griping, just being level. The sound work is excellent however - hits sound solid, enemies chant and warble and everything has a bunch of wacky noises. I have no idea what the chant the orcs make it supposed to mean but they end up with way more personality than you'd expect.

Sacred Citadel also suffers a little for its RPG system - Which is to say, half of it is really obvious and cool. I'm totally good with gold, potions, gambling and loot. Those are all enjoyable things to put in a game! But there's some other stuff that the game doesn't really seem to want to explain. The B button on ye olden xboxen controller does some sort of special and I can not quickly determine which special I'm getting or what precisely some of them do.

I assume it's like golden axe where your special box picks what you do, but I'm not quite certain. There's also some sort of crystal system that does ... Something? I have no idea and it's completely unexplained in the in-game help files. Whether they're like materia or a temporary bonus or whatever, I have no idea and can't figure out how you even access them. (I actually googled it - Apparently, you just equip them and then they tick down whenever you're in combat. That's it. Why couldn't it just say that on screen? Is that hard to explain?)

You can argue it's probably documented somewhere, but shouldn't a brawler meant to be enjoyed with drunk friends be more or less an instant pick and play title? Seriously the one vendor offers you shit and doesn't say on the screen 'equipped and activated immediately, lasts for the duration giving a bonus for that time'. Like sure it's magic and she ain't gotta explain shit but ... No, no way, the game should explain itself.

Overall, Sacred Citadel doesn't hold tons of lasting appeal and is a pretty shallow title, but it looks nice and is easy to pick up and play. I think it's intended for a different sort of market - This would be a great game to fire up big picture mode and blast through an hour or so playing with buddies, maybe with some sort of drinking game involved. I think you only need one copy in that case, so it's probably worth grabbing on sale if you ever see yourself making use of that, but otherwise it isn't really as good a title as it should have been. There's real no reason to have every enemy in the game chain stunlock you and a bit more work on the "heft" of the gameplay would have really helped.

I wish more games were as easy on the eyes as Citadel, though. As 2d games go I haven't seen one so soothing in a while.

Tower Defense Expertise: Defense Grid, the Awakening, the Oodles of DLC

Way way back I got talked into getting Steam at the beginning of the winter sale season. 2010, I think, the year I gave up the WoW and returned to the fold of the glorious PC gaming master race, gpu under one arm, keyboard the other, mouse dangling from my twitching hands. Glorious discount gaming master port gaming race. Blargh. The first game I got was gifted - Shatter, which is a nice little game - but the first one I really got into was Defense Grid. I think I paid 2.50 for it originally, with all the (then) DLC packed in and I've given them money twice more for DLC. Hilariously enough, this is the first tower defense game I'd ever played and probably the first time I'd really gotten into the genre. I think I'd played maybe ten minutes of it on a mod or something. I was never big into RTS games, and then I played WoW and Magic for a couple years, so I'd missed a fair bit of the middle years of gaming.

So Defense Grid was my introduction to tower defense. Since then I've played two of those Orcy games, Sol Survivor, Plants vs Zombies, Sanctum, Dungeon Defenders and perhaps some other shit I've forgotten about. Of all of those ... Defense Grid is the only truly pure TD game. Sol Survivor is close, as the interaction is limited, but the other ones all dumb down the TD mechanics in exchange for more action elements, for better (Orcs Must Die) or worse (Dungeon Defenders, ugh). Ironically, or not, there's a reverse bell curve in action; the more action game, the worse. Then the better!

Defense Grid is very, very pure TD. The tension doesn't come from running around or fighting Orcs, but in very carefully aligning the load balancing of the grid. Doing a fight well requires increasing amounts of precision, on two planes. First, when and where aliens die impacts your "recovery" rate, which is both in terms of interest, access to interest and a couple other little things. Second, the way your towers are structured - the build of the maze - relies on committing to the plan and guiding it as it goes. A couple towers spin into a maze, and then the maze's parts align together to do force multiplication until you have killzones that dispatch ten times the number of aliens the towers would if they weren't working in tandem. I'll talk about this again in a moment.

It's not a visually stunning game, though its art direction and conveyance is pretty solid. The locales are extremely varied, lending a ton more flavor to the game than it would possess otherwise. Maps include icy canyons, various high tech installations and the edges of future cities. The audio direction is really good. You're paired with an AI that ... Well, honestly isn't much more than a cheerleader, but he talks and rambles, gives some back story to aliens being pew pew'd by towers.

Play Relevant Month: Fatalism of the Orcs, Again?

Sequels, man, sequels. There's still orcs. And they still must die.

OMD2 catches up with its spiritual "competitors" Sanctum and Dungeon Defenders by adding two player coop, adding the oh so sexy sorceress from the first game as a coop partner. I put those two in quotes because OMD1 was fun, those other two, not really. I think coop is largely the biggest and most evident element added to the game, the engine looks slightly better, the music and sounds remain excellent. The art style is cartoonish and the whole game maintains the same irreverence the first one had. You'd notice immediately if you say down to play OMD2 that it wasn't OMD1, but maybe it would take a bit to discern between the two if you were watching a stream or so.

The other big changes to the game are more behind the scenes sort of stuff. There are new map types and new maps, but those sort of blur past you. The game has a much deeper pool of traps to choose from, with more weapons and the addition of a "trinket" item type that has various miscellaneous effects. The biggest change to those is a grindy system where you acquire "skulls" as you did in the first game to upgrade and modify your gear. The first game has one upgrade per trap, whereas this game has a chain of basic upgrades, then a binary selection.