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.