Writing Within Gaming

Some of my earliest and most fond memories of PC gaming come from Bioware's Forgotten Realms series. They gave me an unparalleled drive to continue and develop my story in the way that a novel never could. I was as much a part of the story as any of the portraits up the left of the screen. Don't get me wrong, I love a good book, but story-driven gaming holds its own character and niche in entertainment that fascinates me.

As a writer, I strongly feel that stories can benefit from being told through new media. Gaming presents an incredible opportunity for writers to delve into the minds of their audience, and it even leaves room for multiple choice scenarios, the holy grail of storytelling. Occupying the same mental space as the protagonist has a profound effect on how the audience experiences the character's choices, there's a feeling of weight to decisions.
     However, there are a number of things that gaming can't do optimally. A game can't venture beyond what we can see and hear, e.g. the internal thoughts of minor characters. Also, because it's a relatively new medium, it has less material to reference and draw upon than written literature.
     What are games good at, and what are their weaknesses? How will video game story-telling evolve from where it is now?

To start, here are some examples of my favourite stories within games and why I enjoyed them so much.
<SPOILER ALERT> for any of you who haven't played these games, I am sorry:

Baldur's Gate II fused a wondrous fantasy setting with a dark plot. To this day, it remains one of my favourite story-driven titles. The writing was superb and it had enough twists to qualify as a pretzel.

Five party members, a top-down perspective and an opening set in an arcane lab-prison filled with mages and monsters. D&D at its best. It has one of the longest story experiences of any single player RPG. Your companions would frequently initiate conversations while you explored, raising concerns and delights with both you and their peers. Some of them adore each other, and others want to tear out each other's throats as soon as possible. It's rare to have a gaming experience in which your character isn't the only character of... well, character. It's not often you get to play alongside a crazed, claymore wielding barbarian with a pet hamster named 'Boo.'

Neverwinter Nights brought us a solid story, but it had less character-interaction that made Baldur's Gate II's story so gripping. However it has the best and most intuitive map editor I've seen to date, which brought the playerbase into the creative process.

There was a great deal more focus on the main character rather than the supporting acts by the time NWN came out. That was a shame. However, it was heavily moddable and invited players into the creative process with its simple level editor. At last, I could create all of the conversations and quests that I really wanted to play, and share them with my peers. Its single player campaign had a stylish 'story book' sequence that introduced each act, which summarised complex situations without the need for too much introductory dialogue.

A new IP in a Space Opera setting. Bioware took a big risk with Mass Effect, but between the cinematic feel of the game and its sinister villains, Mass Effect took the gaming world by storm.

I'll be honest. I completed Mass Effect in one sitting. My eyes were glued to the screen. The way the game puts the pressure of responsibility on Shepard (the protagonist) is really memorable. Choosing which members of your party have to die to save the mission, is an unforgettable ordeal. Its sequels never quite recaptured the sense of urgency and discovery that this gem had in abundance.

It's not always about the originality of your story. It's also how you tell it. Bastion has some of the most stylish narration and aesthetic choices I've seen, and its framed narrative allows the player to feel part of the story line without having to make any awkward conversation choices.

An ultimately optimistic tale about the end of the world, Bastion gives you two profound choices in the story. 'Kill or rescue your enemies?' And 'Do I really want to go home?' Other than that, the framed narrative gives a tidy reason for your character to remain silent without breaking the third wall. Player Characters are mute in most games, but in Bastion you feel like the hand turning the pages of narration.

Fallout 3 is better known for its exploration and for blowing ghouls to bits with shotguns in slow motion, but it had a great, albeit short story that played on a number of biblical themes in a post-apocalyptic America.

I'm not Christian. I've never read the bible beyond what I had to do for school work a few years back, but due to Fallout 3, I have a favourite excerpt.
"I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end. I give unto him what is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely." The game's story uses the themes of Eden and the Water of Life to great effect in a story about restoring the slightest hope to a post apocalyptic wasteland. It gives an insight into the father's (Liam Neeson's) mind, and shapes the plot as a whole. It's just a shame that you don't get to play it after the end of the story, but I guess its good to end on a high.

What they all do exceptionally well is immerse the player. Either through dialogue, choice scenarios and player action; they all give some level of responsibility to the player and bring them on board with the creative process by asking them to fulfil a role. This is what 'Role Play Games' used to mean, before they became defined by dice rolling and level-ups.

Gaming has a number of issues when it comes to introducing characters to the player. The player has no concept of the protagonist's past, so without an incredibly long explanatory sequence (which would likely bore the player to death), the primary characters should be introduced to the protagonist at the same time the player is introduced to them. Otherwise, a distance is created. An example of a bad character introduction is the beginning of Grand Theft Auto IV. Nico Bellic's brother is introduced, and the history between them is displayed through lively in-jokes and anecdotes, which makes the player feel like the third wheel, breaking the immersion.
     Bastion, however, does this flawlessly. The narrator, Rucks, may be talking from the get-go, but his character meets 'The Kid' at the same time you meet Rucks, and the realisation that the narrator is an interactive character is an exciting moment.
     Though it has a more restricted way of introducing and incorporating characters (particularly in action-packed games), what games do well is attach you to them. This is particularly true of Mass Effect, which uses a real time (almost) conversation system to prevent you from picking the perfect conversation option, which reveals either your own or their character flaws. Unfortunately, this is only true of the first playthrough. Once you've done the Virmire mission twice, you might save a different character than you did before, just to see the results. And another thing, Mass Effect has the potential to kill off characters you know and love like no other RPG before it, only being surpassed (in that regard) by its sequels.

There's a mostly unwritten rule about writing good fiction that you should 'show & not tell' the reader. Unfortunately for gaming writers, they can't effectively use metaphor without some kind of dream-sequence Inception gimmick. Instead, imagery is often replaced by gameplay mechanics. This turns the writing rule for gaming into 'do, and don't show.' There're always exceptions of course, like intentionally removing control to make the player feel helpless in a given situation. Foreshadowing is also is still achievable, because you can copy the way films plant ideas visually. That brings me to another issue.

Games copy films far too much. You are given the tools to create an experience whereby the player IS the protagonist, without the tedium of an adventure book and without having to feed the player information with cut-scene after cut-scene, yet developers still force-feed us information with arbitrary cinematic 'time-outs.' Perhaps they believe that films are the embodiment of perfection as an art form, and that games should be like them. Whenever control of your character is taken from you without good reason, it feels like your childhood friend yanking the controls off you squealing 'your turn's over.' It all ties in with recent advances in visual technology, and these over-used cut scenes are development companies flexing their muscles, showing us what they can do after years of research. That's great, it really is. It's great that you can model realistic facial expressions in real time, but the fact that you're pressing the screen against the face performing them is detrimental to my gameplay experience. Take a step back, and look to the time before they had great visual effects. If a game gave me a little less high-fidelity graphical quality in exchange for complete, uninterrupted control of my character, I could guarantee that it'd be a more enjoyable game. I can't guarantee good reviews from the media, because the gaming media is subject to some very widespread press-freedom (versus investors) issues, but it would be one small piece of an incredible RPG if the rest of it is up to standard. Games are almost exclusively for entertainment, and if its entertainment value comes from player control, then that's what games need to emphasise going forward.

It's one thing to show us too much, but there're also examples of showing us too few visual cues and game mechanics. Dear Esther only allows you basic movement controls and an interact key. This would be fine, if there was some sort of puzzle element for mental stimulation, but instead you're only allowed to view the environments (as pretty as they may be) and read notes left for your character along the way. It sparked great debate at the time as to what counts as a game. Honestly, I always found it difficult to define Dear Esther in any other way than as an e-book.

As a side note, we've recently had a surge in the number of cheap, good value Indie games appearing in various places including the Steam Store. Many of them, including Breath of Death and Cthulu Saves the World, have quirky stories that are getting to an incredibly wide audience. Why wouldn't they? Outside of sales you can get both of these two games as a bundle for less than £1. These are something that can be put together in a Game Jam. This is a multi-day event where programmers, artists and writers meet up, get into teams, create a video game and showcase it by the end. The days where a video game writer was only commissioned for million-dollar projects alone are over, which is great news for all of the new talent coming in.

In the short period that we've had with story-driven gaming, we've seen some of the great things it can pull off. Through a combination of great script-writing and game mechanics, we've seen it simulate (to a shallow degree) a genuine relationship between players and non-player characters. It immerses the player in a way that books and cinema struggle to achieve. However, games encounter issues when they don't respect themselves enough, and try either to copy cinema too much or not give us enough visual cues. Going forward, video game scripts are something that all writers should look to, either to at least try, or to write for from the start. This may eventually reduce the number of bad movie cop-outs and give us some genuinely good material to create really great interactive stories with. It's this idea, that eventually gaming could open up doors for more writers, that has me genuinely, insatiably excited.

Torchlight II

I had pre-ordered Torchlight II (Runic Games©) a few months ago, after seeing what Blizzard had done to my beloved Diablo series of action RPG’s. I’ve always been a firm believer that if you want to protest, you should buy a competitor’s product. How about buying a product from the team that brought us Diablo one and two in the first place, practically inventing the action RPG? That sounded good to me.

It didn’t disappoint.

The first thing that struck me about the game was its graphics. I’d seen the art style before in Torchlight, but the visuals look so much more crisp and refined than they did in the original. Not only is it a pretty look, but it makes it easy to see what’s going on in those larger, more hectic battles. You’re ushered into the game via a story-book sequence that pits the two of the first game’s heroes against the bad guy, Ordrak, and explains why they aren’t the playable characters this time around. It’s worth a watch, and gets all of that story nonsense out of the way so that you can get to hacking, shooting and bashing your way through the progression system.

Surprisingly, Runic chose not to deviate too heavily from the tried & tested progression system in other RPG’s. You gain one or two skill points each level that you can spend on skills. Putting enough points into a skill will unlock its ‘tier bonus’, which gives it an additional perk, making it a more useful skill than if it had gained X% damage alone.

There are four classes to choose from:

•       The Berserker: Uses the spirits of animals to enhance his general combat strength. Generally played as a melee class.
•        The Engineer: Uses tools and gadgets to both support his team mates and inflict heavy damage. Used as both a melee or a ranged class
•       The Outlander: An explorer. Think of a rifle-toting scout with magical capabilities. Usually ranged
•     The Embermage: Fire, Ice and Lightning. All we’re missing is brimstone. Not a unique class, but still interesting given how great the particle effects look. Usually ranged.

I chose to roll with the Berserker, who builds Fury with each hit. Once the Fury bar fills up, you have a limited time in which you both move faster and are guaranteed critical hits. Using a greatsword or hammer while in this mode would allow me to one-shot the tightly clumped groups of goblin-like creatures. In tougher fights, I would deal with the lesser minions to build up my Fury, and then swing wildly at the boss before backing off again. Each class has a mechanic like this that spices up the combat, and changes the way you play on the fly. It gets you closer to the core of what this type of game is about… smashing things to bits.

Another thing that Torchlight II does well is its secret areas and challenges. Upon killing a ‘phase wolf’, a portal opened that I blindly stumbled through. I was met with a three-part challenge to kill waves of monsters, and the final prize was a screen full of loot. This was not an isolated thing, though. A puzzle in a bandit cave yielded another stash of goodies, and I would continually find giant golden crabs that dropped keys that I needed to unlock golden chests. The game really does reward you for exploring, rather than the old map exploration system that was more like a scratch card; scrubbing away until you found what you needed, and then leaving the rest untouched.

What’s more? The game is playable both in multiplayer LAN and offline single player mode, as well as the expected hot-join multiplayer. No relying on servers to hold their own, and no restrictions to your gameplay experience.

Where does it fall short? If you were looking for a game that overhauls the action RPG, you’re looking in the wrong place with Torchlight II. Also, you can only get it through Steam, and some people don’t like using Valve’s service. Other than that, you’re getting a polished, fast paced, beautifully crafted action RPG with mod support (to come soon) and generous multiplayer features, all for less than £20.

Up to now: Guild Wars 2

It's been just over a month since release. Many people have surfed the Dynamic Event waves to level 80, and  the PvP players are starting to get some crazy looking attire. It's been hugely successful in the brief time we've had it, but can it hold on to its end-game magic long enough to keep people interested?

Starting off with the personal story; a pleasant, though scripted game-play experience for one player to share with friends, if he/she desires. The idea is that once you've completed one character's personal story, you could have a completely different experience with a new character. A new race, new class, new quirky background stories about your involvement with the circus. However, this simply isn't the case. Regardless of how many variations you make in character selection from your previous play-through, you will only see a real difference up until level 40-50 ish. It's at this point where the game moves away from your choice of faction (Vigil, Whispers or Priory), and towards the Pact. The Pact is an alliance of all three of the player-chosen factions. This is also the point where the Sylvari Trahearne, takes the lead role in the story away from your character. This needs to be done or the game would feel broken by having so many player Pact- commanders. After then, the variation comes from the 'fork-in-the-road' conversations in which you choose a plan of action. Trahearne, naturally, defers to you for every major decision in the campaign against the dragon, Zhaitan. It makes you wonder,
'Sorry, who's the commander, again?'
Not to mention Trahearne's wooden acting (excuse the pun), which somehow allows him to make a stirring speech of Martin Luther King proportions sound like a 'mind the gap' tube chant. Maybe it's so he doesn't steal your character's bad-assery spotlight, but still. I love what ArenaNet have done with this part of the game, but the personal story's lead role could have had a little more charisma, no?
Varied or not, the final clash with Zhaitan is something to behold. Riding a flak-cannon toting airship headlong into a horde of lesser dragons never gets old, and using an Asuran mega-laser to blast bits off the boss-man is indeed as fun as it sounds. You'll also get some neat rewards for finishing the plot, which are randomly generated within certain parameters. The only issue I have with the system as it stands, is that the final personal story battle is a story mode dungeon, and some of the players who aren't as proficient in MMOs and are just there for the personal story will have some serious trouble reaching the end of what they're playing the game for. There is something to be said for making the game challenging, but perhaps the challenge is best left for the explorable-mode dungeons.
But seriously, if you can, do Arah story mode at least once. You won't regret it.

The ruins of Orr. A bleak, yet oddly picturesque landscape.

The Dynamic Events in the highest-level zones go one-step further in terms of their scale than you would have seen before level 80. Take the top-end Norn zone, Frostgorge Sound: the 'meta event' chain results in a Claw of Jormag (a huge ice dragon) to attack the north-eastern-most corner of the zone. It takes about 30-40 players to pick up some Charrzookas, fend off ice elementals and arm flak cannons long enough to bring the blighter crashing headlong into a mountain. Then, the players must defend siege golems as they carry bombs to the grounded dragon's feet while hordes of Icebrood attack from two sides. At the end you're rewarded with a chest which contains level 75-80 gear and a vendor appears that sells top-level crafting recipes. As always, however, the mob of players will always be disorganised. There's no real replacement for raids that ex-wow players will be looking for. At the end of it all, it seems that the Karma system (the currency gained from completing events) is just something else to collect in order to forge a Legendary weapon. More on that later.

Explorable mode dungeons are the mainstay of the endgame PvE. Like in other MMO's, doing these dungeon runs earns you tokens, which can be exchanged at a vendor in Lion's Arch for weapons and armour that have a look tailored specifically to their respective dungeon's theme. They recently changed the system so that the tokens are only rewarded at the end of the run. This is to prevent players exploiting resetting the dungeons after the first encounter for quick tokens. There's plenty of variety of appearance among the dungeon sets, and you can even mix and match and still get the set-bonus benefits by using transmutation stones. If you so choose, you can have an entirely unique-looking set of armour. No identi-kits here.
There is a problem with how the way the routes are chosen through the dungeon, but one that isn't easily fixed. You are presented with three to four options on which route to take at the beginning, and the party is given the vote on each one. Democracy, folks! However, this means that each of the routes has to have the same 'token reward/time' ratio for the majority of PvE players to be interested in doing it. This made the Scholar Magg run of Citadel of Flame the best route to take for tokens, even with increased end-rewards from the other routes. This prevents players from experiencing a great deal of content when playing with strangers, as it's so difficult to persuade anyone to explore content that is numerically inferior in terms of its rewards. To my relief, ArenaNet are quickly working out a solution whereby the first run-through of any explorable route per day will yield sixty tokens, which means you get the best of both worlds. The rewards... and the gameplay experience.

Another day at work for a Charr paramedic

WvWvW or World versus World versus World (... versus World?) provides a genuine use for your hard work in PvE by allowing your level 80 gear stats to carry over. Some will complain that this makes in inherently imbalanced, but World PvP in any game has been about how many chums you brought to the party, rather than your individual stats and skill. This mode also provides a PvP fix to players that maybe aren't quite confident enough to play in structured 5v5 PvP. You can get an insane amount of gold, experience and Karma; all of it scaling to your level to provide the best reward. The server matches go on for two weeks, and create friendly rivalries between servers. Well, mostly friendly... this is the internet. A well-organised guild force can coordinate its use of siege weapons, and when it pushes out into the field, to great effect. There's a feeling of pride when taking a large chunk of land from an opposing server, and holding back the counter attack. You did your lot proud. There is no reward other than pride for winning a server match-up, but honestly, what better and more lasting reward can you get out of an MMO than pride?
Plus, you can create and use Iron-man style 'Alpha Siege Golems', (Sort of like Dreadnoughts from Warhammer: 40k)  which is a reason to play by itself.

This brings me to the Legendary weapons. I'm talking supreme instruments of mass Skriit destruction. A unicorn bow that shoots rainbows, and all that good stuff. These may be cool as can be, but I disagree with how they are attained. They require you to spend weeks gathering enough Karma, enough dungeon tokens, enough crafting skill, enough WvWvW tokens and gold to make, and I think that for a game that was sold promising 'no grind,' this seems very out of place. I can understand that ArenaNet only want a few people on each server having one, but creating a super-long grind isn't the way to achieve that end. Having an achievement-based system (i.e. accomplishing something that's near impossible) would have worked better. It says more about the weapon bearer if they got it through achieving something, rather than having a lot of spare time on their hands. Eventually, as it stands, everyone who really wants one will eventually get it before the expansions are released. Still, it's something to work towards that MMO players really want when they play, so an item that takes a long time to acquire achieves that end.

At last, I'm brought to the sPvP (structured). It's not really 'endgame' as such, nor is it 'early' or 'mid-game'. It's a different game entirely, and one where the only progression is aesthetic rewards. It's sleek, tactical and requires some game knowledge to play and watch, but no where near as much game knowledge to watch as a game like WoW does. This is thanks to the capture & hold mechanic on all of its maps. Red and blue numbers make it easy to determine who's winning, and who just did something awesome. The catch? It's not going to attract any audience outside its own player base. This is no Starcraft, which can be appreciated by a broad range of viewers. When the ranked tournaments are finally released, however, I think we will see the Guild Wars 2 PvP scene explode with enthusiasm.

So, the endgame has its issues, and its dead-ends. However, the levelling experience is by far and away the most engaging levelling experience in an MMO to date. There is also no subscription fee, and paying for the expansions means you pay for content as it is released, rather than for how long the developer takes to bring out said content. The WvWvW game is infinitely captivating and the PvP has a healthy competitiveness in its community that so many other games miss. The PvE game will not keep you occupied as long as other MMO's, but that's because it doesn't hold you back at every turn with arbitrary grinds and restrictions. It's a shortened PvE experience with most of the tat taken out and left aside.

Skulking Around In: Natural Selection 2

It's getting close to its release now, so I thought I'd do a write up on the sequel to a well-loved Half-Life mod that I've had an absolute blast/shoot/chop/stomp with.

First, a little glimpse into the history of Natural Selection (NS1). It blended the genres of FPS and RTS, giving players the goal of destroying the enemy base, much in the same way as Savage. However, Savage didn't come up with the concept to begin with; it only gave a commander to both sides. The commander controls the base-building and team-support mechanics of the game. He also has exclusive access to certain NPC units that simply do his/her bidding and nothing else. He issues orders to his team mates, and they can choose which goals to prioritise. Giving the foot-soldiers creative freedom gives the game an interesting dynamic. Instead of giving a specific order of <Attack Target> and then <Wait for Further Instruction>, the commander can explain using voice chat the over-arching goal he wants his team or specific marines to accomplish. Imagine, for a moment, that a Zealot from Starcraft could intelligently assess the situation and edit the commands given to him to best suit the situation.
'No, high templar, it would be better for me to protect our ramp's choke point to prevent any zergling run-bys!'
Ace.
This is, however, a double-edged sword. A new (or less cooperative) player could completely disregard the commander's orders, and the disorganised confusion would likely give the other team a few windows of opportunity to destroy resource towers and take more bases.

NS2 develops on the first game by allowing both teams to have a commander. Previously, the aliens would share the duties of a commander by assigning each other tasks over the mic, but now the process is streamlined with their newly dedicated boss-skulk. It allows for the better allocation of the alien team's brain-power. One player handles placing down structures, ordering upgrades and general care-taking, the rest of the team can focus purely on bringing down the enemy marines and resource towers.

It'll take more than bleach to get rid of that stuff

All of the classic units and upgrades remain; including the:

• Skulk: The aliens' base-unit. It has a melee-range bite, can run on walls and ceilings, has enough movement speed to make Greyhounds wish they could run on walls.
• Gorge: The aliens' builder unit. It's sort of like a deep-fried piglet that vomits healing acid. it can also build 'clogs,' which block movement through tight corridors, and Hydras, which are miniature turrets, which can net you a view kills from careless marines.
• Lerk: A pterodactyl which sprays toxic gas in its wake. This makes it difficult for marines to push locations without flame-throwers to systematically burn away the fumes. It can also be upgraded to shoot spikes from glands protruding from its body, which make it great for harassing at range.
• Fade: With blades for hands, the fade is a real nuisance for marine players. Its teleportation and phasing-out-of-reality capabilities, coupled with its beastly melee damage will often force marines to use shotguns to bring it down quickly.
• Onos: An Incredible Hulk of flesh and chitin that can break doors and stomp to knock down nearby marines. They can't digest a single target any more, however.
• Jetpack: A late-game changer. Marines will rejoice to get these, finally able to match the mobility of the alien units in open areas. They are an expensive upgrade however, and they're lost on death.
• Exo-Skeletons: A huge bulk of metal and gunnery is exactly what the doctor ordered to clear out those pesky alien entrenchments. They're also the marines' salvation against the infamous Onos.

The power mechanic has proven itself as a system that induces genuine fear in NS2's players. Once the power node in a sector is destroyed, marines lose a huge visibility advantage while having to contend with the aliens' infa-red alternative. It will also power down all structures in the vicinity. If the power goes down in your main base, as the marines you'd best have some repair tools to hand to patch it up quick, or GG's will fill your chat-log. It serves as a good real-life reminder that you should stay on top of your electricity bill.

The Crevice... Where Lerks and Jetpacks reign

Graphics technology has taken leaps and bounds since the original mod, and NS2 looks incredible. The lighting effects and shadows are spot-on. Not only do they look impressive, but they can conceal skulks in the shadows without the need for intentionally not rendering something to preserve the stealth mechanic. The HUD is sleek, and stylised to which team you're on. It's a beautiful game, but that does mean that it might have trouble running on a number of machines. If you're thinking of buying it, make sure to compare system specs and requirements, and note that optimisation is still improving going forward.

It would be great to see this game do well, as the development team is very well involved with the player base. So far, we haven't seen a precise release date, but its coming this summer. If you can run it, I'd thoroughly recommend giving this gem a shot.

Guild Wars 2: BWE#3

My guild mates and I wasted no time in diving straight into the tournament play for the third beta event of Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately, the tournament servers weren't quite up to scratch, and a plethora of bugs and miscellaneous technical issues would either prevent us from joining a queue, or stop us from being able to reach that first place prize we had already earned. Hopefully this will be heavily addressed before release, or there'll be a very large number of angry Europeans. Still, when we did manage to get into matches, we forgot about all of the problems, simply because of the PvP is so good. Balance is mostly there; although not quite, but it rarely is in any game. A third map was added to the list called the 'Legacy of the Foefire,' which features semi-hilly terrain in an almost lane-based format, and also has two keep lords that each team must attack or defend, lest they give the enemy team a huge burst of points.

I diversified a lot this beta. In-between playing the Warrior, I played the Ranger, the Necromancer and the Thief. I found myself enjoying the Thief. I never thought that would happen. They don't have the staying-power in combat that most of the other classes do, but they have unrivalled utility. I would often pretend to run away from a point with Shadowstep, which earned me a few chasing players, and then activate it again to return to the original position; neutralising the enemy team's capture-point.

Although the server mostly prevented the tournaments we played from finishing, we did manage to get a single gold chest for first place. It was an eventful second round in the 'Battle of Khylo':

1. We take the Mansion, they take the Windmill. I begin running towards the Windmill for a sneaky neutralisation, and I notice all five of their team heading for the middle point, the Clocktower.
2. I hurriedly yell this down the mic to my team mates, and immediately head for our trebuchet.
3. After smashing the roof off of the tower, I continually blast the capture point, inflicting near 10k damage to multiple targets per shot. This also knocks the enemy away, allowing for my team mates to capture the point with no difficulty.
4. I then ask my team to spot targets for me, and hit their windmill defenders once or twice. After deciding they'd had quite enough, two of them push for my precious trebuchet.
5. We manage to hold it, and they retreat towards our Mansion, which I continue to mercilessly bombard. I'm still not used to the trebuchet, so I miss a few shots, which allows the point to get neutralised. However, they don't manage to capture the point and one of our Elementalists manages to re-capture it. 
6. Now, three of their team push for the trebuchet, and our other Elementalist takes this opportunity to destroy theirs. Unfortunately, ours gets broken into splinters, but we were put so far ahead in points that the game was comfortably ours. 

It may be a traditional Capture & Hold map, but the trebuchet spices it up, so you can never truly be safe while capturing points, and mastering its use can really help you out

(My Thief: Wearing her new shoulder armour with pride.)

Without the server issues, the PvP system is easy to access, addictive, and highly competitive without being elitist. Sure, you'll get groups of people asking only for players with a certain experience level, but you can very easily join up in a group and fight for aesthetic prizes yourself, without being restricted by any of the old notions of gear requirements or match making rating (MMR).

Only a month to go now...

Endless Space: It goes on forever!

Endless Space. No, it's not a hint to the hard-disk space required for installation, but to a surprisingly good 4X game that you'll never finish a game of. It takes influence from Master of Orion, and for those who aren't familiar with the genre, think of it as Sid Meiers Civilisation in space, but with fewer immortal Gandhi look-a-likes and more intergalactic space slugs.

The four 'X's are Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. These are the aims of the game, and there're multiple win conditions for players to pursue. The idea is that the game pans out differently each time its played, with a different combination of military and peaceful solutions to opponents. In reality, this isn't the case. Everyone wants a piece of the ship-building, space battling invasion gameplay, which can make it somewhat difficult to play as the more peaceful races.

The combat is nothing like Master of Orion's turn based, isometric tactical screen, but is instead boiled down to what is essentially a rock, paper, scissors card game. Your fleet will fire rounds at the enemy automatically in the three phases of the battle. To compliment this, you play 'cards' which give certain bonuses for a single round of combat. Each card (except retreat) has a counter card, and if it is countered, the effect of your card is not only completely neutralised, but your opponent gains a specific bonus to his card as a result. It makes for some interesting mind-games; trying to guess what your opponent is going to pick, and out-picking him to the best of your ability. Other than these cards, its the ship-building that decides the fights.

(Bullets at long range. Like confetti, it's just annoying and doesn't really do much.)

The ship-building interface allows you to add modules to a class of hull of your choosing. It's heavily linked with the research you make. When new weapons come along, you'll be wanting to retrofit all of your old ships with new weapons, engines, and defensive modules. If everyone pursues a military research path, it quickly becomes an arms race and a retrofit-extravaganza. However, researching new weapons needs to be balanced with researching new hulls, which is in the expansion tree. Focussing too much on one research path is a bullet to the foot. Hybridising too much can leave you in the same situation. You're never really safe, no matter what you choose to tech into, which makes the games tense; forcing you to use your strategic mind.

(The standard defender. It usually becomes obsolete within 20 turns.)

I've played too many games of Endless Space to bother counting, and only two have gotten anywhere near completion. It's one of those games that you need to set aside a day to play with someone, like Settlers of Catan or other board games that take forever (and then some) to play. It's one of the few games that actually has endless hours of gameplay, and it goes to show that the turn-based format is far from dead, even with new technology.

Dawn of War II: Retribution

In the grim darkness of the not-too distant future, there was only Games for Windows Live.

Until now...

GFWL has been purged from the Dawn of War franchise, allowing for the more user-friendly Steam interface to take its place. No more slow, irritating friends interface that fought with Steam.

No more compatibility issues. No more being booted from the game because your internet tripped out for half a second. Funnily enough, there was a global steam server crash that lasted a few minutes on the first night I started playing. Some things... you just can't escape. I didn't buy Retribution at release, it slipped under my radar. That is, until a sale came up and I practically stole it at £5.

The game has three modes. These are the campaign (which can be played with one additional player), the competitive multiplayer, and Last Stand. It's basically a game of its own. Three players choose a hero unit and their wargear loadout and face off against wave upon wave of pre-determined enemies, trying to get a high score through a mixture of the virtues of speed, survival and area control. It's a simple concept, but one that's executed brilliantly. It's addictive, has a short duration, and has a surprising level of nuance and team play involved.




Baneblade: The tank to end all tanks.

The campaign is as good as ever, but the greater variety comes with its problems. You can play as any of the five races in the game now, including the infamous Tyranids, who get the award for the slowest talking leader of all time. The campaign has little re-playability because all of the earlier missions seem Copy-Pasted, only with different units for the player. I can't honestly say that I expected five great, full length campaigns that stood out from one another, but the campaigns have been a great strength of Chaos Rising and the original release. At least it serves as an extended tutorial for using the units each race offers.

The standard 'capture and hold' multiplayer is better than ever with the introduction of the imperial guard; a largely conscripted, force with 'bog-standard' infantry with commissar leaders that can execute their men to inspire better fighting (workplace motivation at its finest). They also have good tanks. I love good tanks.

Though the game can at times seem slow compared with RTS franchises like Starcraft, it still has those awesome moments that make it worth a look if you're looking for a strategy fix.