Sketchy Tower Defense (XBLI)

My Rating: 9/10
Xbox User Rating: 4/5

This is my first Xbox Live Indie review. From now on, if there is no bracketed tag in the title, the game can be assumed as PC or multi-platform. This is my first Xbox review and I plan on doing more for mainly arcade and indie in the near future, (XBLI) is for Xbox Live Indie (XBLA) is for Xbox Live Arcade. Now, to the review!

This game is simple, simple but fun and at 80 Microsoft points (roughly a buck) you definately get what you pay for.

Unlike some other Tower Defense games the maps are generally open and allow you to construct however you damn well please, the monsters move in a straight line to the castle at the opposite end of the map, some maps have two castles, others have three lines of monsters going after one castle. Either way, you have 10 life that you start with, each bad guy that makes it to one of your castles takes away one life.

I think the two major flaws of this game is that there is only a few maps and there is only endless mode, no pussy "yay, you beat the level" it's real man land, survival of the fittest...you know...for real men that sit around and play games all day...

But other than those two flaws this game still gets 9/10 because it's just that much fun for only a buck. There are special two player maps which are essentially VS maps, one player is working against the other. And then there is the normal maps, you play against the horde trying to get to your castle...OR you can have a buddy jump in and help you at any time (usually works best when there is more than one line of guys going to one castle).

All towers are upgradeable multiple times, there are damage and range boosters, air only towers, traps, basically anything you want in a good quality tower defense. Sure, the artwork is basic, all sketched on graph paper, but it's really fun and fully worth 80 points, I'd probably even get it for 160 points.

And now, screenshots!

Revenge of the Titans

My Rating: 8.5/10
Desura Community: 9/10

Revenge of the Titans is described as a Tower Defense with RTS elements, tower defense on wikipedia is described as an "RTS offshoot" (which is also how I classify tower defense) so for me, the way they describe the game was pretty strange until I started playing it.

What sets this tower defense apart from all others is two major points. The first point being that like in a normal RTS game you must gather resources. You do this by placing a gathering building near the crystals to mine them. The second point being there is a research system. Normal tower defense, once you get past the first level you unlock another tower, and possibly another after the next one and so on and so forth. In Revenge of the Titans, after each level you pick a technology or a building. Each building you can choose requires certain technologies researched, and some technologies give you bonuses to damage, armor penetration and such.

Mostly other than that it plays out like your standard tower defense, you spend your money (gained from pickups, killing enemies and mined resources) on buildings and your leftover resources (along with the level completion bonus) are carried over to the next level, so in this game, hoarding resources is actually a good thing as it will help you out later in harder levels.

I have only played about an hour of the game and have not seen all of the enemies yet, but there are armored enemies, enemies that seem to move by leaping then pausing, leaping then pausing, there are larger, stronger versions of enemies and there are boss enemies. There are probably other types of enemies in the game that I haven't come across yet (possibly flying enemies?).

All in all I have been really enjoying this game and would highly recommend it to any Tower Defense fan or someone looking to get into the genre.

Stronghold

My Rating: 9/10
Gog.com User Rating: 4.5/5

If there ever was a sim game that got smashed with real time strategy and actually came out good it is Stronghold. You build your castle where you want, how you want, and then (if you're not in an economic campaign or "free build") protect it from enemy troops and animals such as bears and wolves.

Multiple play modes await in Stronghold: Military campaign (the main story), where you wage war against evil lords. Economic campaign: you have a goal to reach for goods produced and a time limit, not much story, but this campaign is in no way shape or form easy! You can siege famous castles (or custom built castles). You can test your castle building ability in the "Siege That" challenge mode where you have to hold enemies off from your custom built castle. There is also a free build mode where you can "peacefully design your ideal castle", or in my case, design a massive, ugly POS trying to expand to keep people to fill the jobs to make sure I have a steady income of resources.

There are various map packs available online (as with any game, some are excellent and better done than the base game and others are steaming piles of fail) and there are even a few mods out there to enhance gameplay.

Gameplay is simple, you need houses to get peasants, your peasants fill jobs (such as farming and processing food, gathering resources, hunting, weapon smithing, etc.) Idle peasants can be recruited into your army if you have spare peasants and spare weapons (troops do not count towards your maximum population). Build walls to defend your castle including towers (so your archers can still shoot your enemies) and gates (just don't leave them open or there's no point to the walls!) walls seem to deteriorate very quickly, so always be prepared to build new pieces in their place.

An element that reminds me a lot of Lords of the Realm is the happiness system. You can tax your people to get gold, but if you tax them too much they will become unhappy and leave the castle. There are ways of making your peasants happy, such as drowning their sorrows in ale, for example.

No matter what I day about this game I cannot do it justice, it's available at gog.com Gog.com or you can get the Stronghold collection on Steam which includes every Stronghold game except the third (the newest one). If you enjoy Stronghold I would recommend checking out Stronghold 3, a lot of people were disappointed in it but that's mainly because it was too similar to the first. It is in no way shape or form worth 49.99 but if you see it on sale you'll probably enjoy it.

One final thing: one beautiful (to some people horrible) thing about this game is there is only one voice actor. This is really noticeable with the female characters, whether or not this was on purpose or due to a lack of funding I'm not sure but it gave the game a subtle humor. The soundtrack is also great.

Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal

My Rating: 9.5/10
Gamespot Community: 9.3/10
Gog.com users: 5/5

I would like to start this off by saying that I have not actually played the first Baldur's Gate game, I hear it is also great, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm sure most RPG gamers nowadays have heard of Bioware, and they would more than likely think Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. Pesonally I think back to Baldur's Gate 2 and it always puts a smile on my face. Anyone who has played Icewind Dale (1 or 2) or the original Baldur's Gate is fimiliar with the Infinity Engine. Please do not confuse this game with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance as the gameplay is nowhere near the same at all.

Baldur's Gate 2 follows the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, so anyone familiar with D&D will be able to hop right in. While the rules may seem strange to anyone who has never touched D&D or D&D based computer games before, the game presents it in such a way that anyone can pick it up and play.

The game is a party based RPG, you create your initial character (which since it's D&D based includes alignment, and apparently the game penalizes you if you break your alignment) and start the game, you then find 3 party members (and later a fourth) and once you're out of the initial dungeon there are quite a few party members to choose from. One big thing about this game is you HAVE to be careful about your choices, the game not only makes you stick to your chosen alignment, but if you act out of your party members alignment (say you have all good characters and you're an evil dickhead who attacks children in the street) your party members WILL leave you (after a warning or two). One great thing about this game is not only do you control your characters development but your party members as well (it irritates me when games won't let you do that). One of the main flaws I found is that there is an over abundance of good aligned characters, and it can be difficult to make an evil party, often times you have to resort to listening to the whining of neutral aligned characters.

The game goes from great story, to a point where the story pretty much stalls (you have to raise a large sum of money to continue the main quest) but when it stalls, there are massive amounts of side quests to do, and then back to a great story right until the end. The expansion also had a great story, but it felt like it didn't really continue on from the first whatsoever.

The engine was great, it let you choose if you wanted real-time, turn based or anywhere in between with choosing when the game autopaused, you could have it pause after every single thing that happened and plan out a complex strategy if you really wanted to, or throw it on real time and go "RAAAAR ME SMASH!!!!" Though, since it's D&D mages can be a real pain in the ass if it's on full real-time.

The game also, interestingly enough for the time, let you change difficulty level on the fly. Personally when I first played the game I had never seen this feature before and I was a bit shocked.

The last thing I want to say about this game is that the AC system is a bit messed...its like golf, the lower your AC score is the better. When I first played it as a kid I was wondering how in the hell leather armor was better than full plate, then I realized how it worked. They are re-mastering the game (as well as the first) and updating the engine a little bit, they announced that in March, hopefully we'll see the AC system normalize a bit more...but I hope they keep the AD&D rules and most of the way the game is intact because for me it's a timeless classic.

The game will work on any version of Windows up to 7, however any version XP or later will require the XP patch otherwise you will not be able to interact with NPCs for some reason. Wikipedia says that it is available on Mac but I'm not sure if they mean the re-mastered version or not (which is also going to be available on Iphone and other I stuff). Hopefully they make a Linux port, but we'll have to wait and see.

Edit: I would like to include that the game does everything by dice roll (like in D&D) so damage is displayed as XdY instead of X-Y. The difference being if your damage is 2d4 the game is rolling two four sided dice for a damage threshold of 2-8 damage instead of just telling you 2-8.

Both Baldur's Gate games are available on gog.com, and I would say 9.99 is a great price for the second (which includes the expansion) I gladly paid 20 (mind you that was at least 5, 6 years ago). First one (with expansion) is also on there for 9.99 but personally I think I'll wait until they re-master it...if it's any good I'll get that version, if not I'll pick it up there.

Gog.com (second baldur's gate)

DUNGEONS

My Rating: 7/10
Gamespot Community: 5/10

So the best way to describe this game (to those who know the following titles) is that it is a combination of Dungeon Keeper and a little bit of Overlord.

I'll be the first to admit "play as the villain!" is not in any way shape or form a new concept, but it's always nice to see a game that pulls it off well, and one of those games IMO is DUNGEONS.

You are a Dungeon Lord who (through unfortunate events) is dethroned and must fight his way back to the top! You lure heroes into your dungeon with gold, equipment or whatever that hero type wants, wait until they are happy enough (the happier they are the more soul energy you get from them) have your monsters beat the crap out of them, then haul them off to the prison to extract more soul energy.

Beware though, if the heroes get more powerful than your monsters, your dungeon heart may be in trouble, once your dungeon heart is toast, so are you. Your character CAN die and come back, it will just take away part of your dungeon heart's health, so be careful.

What seperates this game from Dungeon Keeper is your Dungeon Lord. He is your main unit, you command him, he levels up, you give him stat points and select spells for him to learn, there are three spell trees to go into. The best spells are only unlocked when you get to the end of a tree.

The game starts off simply enough, first you just have to deal with heroes, then later, you have to deal with quests to move on later even being pitted against other Dungeon Lords. The downside: this game is still 30 bucks. That price, however, isn't too bad, and I'd recommend it if you liked games like Dungeon Keeper and Overlord.

Edit: I do recommend if you get it to get it on Steam, while other places may be the same price and might be preferable for some people, Steam gives you extra content: "DUNGEONS - STEAM SPECIAL EDITION includes an exclusive extra mission, all new maps to play in sandbox mode and a variety of unique prestige items to customize your dungeon."

Lords of the Realm 2

My Rating: 9/10
GoG User Rating: 4.5/5

This game was from way back when they included DOS and windows versions together on a CD Rom. If you do want to get this game (there is a Lords of the Realm Royal Edition on gog.com which includes the original, the second and the expansion for the second, siege pack for 5.99) I would suggest a digital copy, there is a test to see if your computer can run it, if your computer is too good (anything windows XP or better is probably too good) an error message will pop up saying something like "Interger divide by zero" and it will NOT let you install the game again, there is a work around, but the problem I had then was it would not read the CD to play the game. I've had to play the DOS version on my old 98 PC because of this and it's kind of annoying.

That said, this game is a basic medieval strategy game, the king is dead and you are pitted against between 1 and 4 other lords (the knight, baron, bishop and countess) to fight for the Kingdom. You need to balance military conquest with maintaining your population (hapiness, food supply, etc.).

I would say that in some ways I can compare this game to Civilization, but only in the way that it is a strategy game that is simple enough to pull you in but complex enough to keep you there for days and days on end, and whether you win or lose, you had fun. Sometimes if you lose over and over again you go away sore.

I cannot stress about how important it is to maintain a balance in this game, if you have no military but the people are doing great and love you, you'll get floored, unlike Civilization the only way to win is through military conquest. On the other hand, if you keep raising armies and taxes to fund them, your people will get pissed off and either revolt, in which case you lose the land, or they will emmigrate to another county (this being said, pissy neighbors can be good for you!)

The game does have a basic diplomacy system, you can send a gift of crowns (money), send a compiment, send an insult, offer an alliance, and (if you are in an alliance) ask your ally to help you. You do need to maintain relations with your ally, however, personally I never feel like giving them money just to keep allied and my alliances always fall apart, that can be good in a way too because it keeps one lord off your back for a bit.

Combat in this game I've never really been a huge fan of, it's your basic combat, your units on the field VS. enemies units, one single troop can represent multiple units though, and each time one unit dies, that troops..."HP bar" goes down by 1, thus making large scale battles into small scale ones that old computers could handle. The game does give you an option to autocalc battles, usually your side does worse though than if you actually fight out the battle.

The siege pack expansion essentially adds skirmish battles, you can either do a regular skirmish, a siege attack or a siege defense (it also includes a basic map editor) with options as to army size. The major bug in Siege Pack is that it runs on points, since peasants are the lowest point costing unit you can have 900 peasants to your enemies 300 trained troops and win every time (maybe that's what made me dislike the combat?).

Overall this game is an excellent strategy game, I've had freinds complain they could never find the right balance, they always got smashed or their counties always revolted, I've only had this problem on high difficulty games, so maybe I'm just randomly good at this game, who knows.

Royal Edition on gog.com for 5.99: Gog.com