Gratuitous Space Battles Review

 

Gratuitous Space Battles plays out like an interstellar fireworks display. You see big space ships duking it out with lasers, missiles and all sorts of sci fi instruments of death. You don’t get to control them however, because Gratuitous Space Battles is a strategy game centered around the planning stage of a space battle.

 

The planning stage is the entire focus of the game. There are mainly three classes of ships, the cruiser, frigate, and fighter. The cruisers are the big bulky heavy ships. Frigates are the lighter ships and fighters are the tiny ships that buzz around bigger ships like flies. Each different class of ships have different type of hull design that has a host of stats related to them.

 

 

Cost, weight, hard and soft points are all important considerations to a budding space ship designer. The hard and soft points are the points on the ship you can attach modules to. You need to balance out the need to attach weapons, defences like armour or shields, power generators, crew living quarters for the battles you will face.

 

Because the battles you will face will be on the difficult side. To make the most of the situation, you’ll need to read the stats at the end of the battle to discover the weaknesses of your fleet. Do you need more armour? More longer range weapons? Are enemy missiles destroying your fleet?

 

 

Of course since these hard and soft points are limited on a hull design, you’ll often have to resort to specialised ships to counter the enemy fleets strength in some cases. Design a missile defence ship designed to deal with incoming missiles, or maybe a frigate with an EMP cannon that disables enemy ships?

 

Apart from fixing modules, you can also give orders to your ship. These orders range from fly in formation, protect, cautious and many more. These orders allow you to tweak the behaviour of various ships in your fleet. You might find your frigates moving too far forward racing to their oblivion or your cruisers wasting their time trying to swat those pesky fighters. You can use orders and targeting instructions to rectify this.

 

 

Once you’ve set up your fleet the way you want it, the battle plays out. This part of Gratuitous Space Battles has been described by other sites and reviews as being frustrating simply for the fact that users that are used to RTS games might not like having no control of your units. I beg to differ since Gratuitous Space Battles isn’t an RTS.

 

Gratuitous Space Battles gives me that feeling I got when I played the earlier Championship Manager games. The thrill of watching your plan working out well or watch helplessly as your plan crumbles. There is a certain satisfaction to working out a perfect plan that wins you the battle. Or that eureka moment you get when you got the perfect combination.

 

 

Multiplayer basically revolves around playing other player made battles called challenges. You could view all challenges in a lobby, play it and rate it like you would on any other media. There isn’t any two player death match. Which isn’t too bad really as Gratuitous Space Battles is a great strategy game that you can pick up to play for a short while.

 

Gratuitous Space Battles is a fun little game that while being short of missions, makes for a fun diversion. There is a a DLC content called the Tribe DLC pack which adds a new alien race with all new hull design, weapons etc and two new missions which add a little more content when you’re done with the base game. Try out the demo, buy it if you like it.

 

Pros:

• Pretty graphics and particles effects
• Require plenty rethinking of strategy for each battle
• Easy to pick up and play

 

Cons:

• Only a few scenarios shipped with the vanilla version
• Certain weapons might be a tad too powerful at the moment

 

Verdict: Gratuitously Fun

 

Rating: 8/10

 

Price USD $19.99

 

Steam Product Page

Official Website

AI War: Fleet Command Review

AI War: Fleet Command was a game that surprised me in many ways. A game developed by a one man studio,(he later got help from 2 other people for art and music)Arcen Games. A game that was never really featured much in the mainstream press. A game that despite all this, is to my mind, the best strategy game experience of 2009(and will continue with many DLC’s and an expansion in 2010).


AI War takes its inspiration from Supreme Commander. Huge fleets, big armies, macro control. It has some similar features to Sins of A Solar Empire, with it’s own take of the empire tree user interface(A list of buildings and ships in a system/sector that is instantly accessible) and a galactic map(which to be fair is something most space based game will have to do anyway).
 

While those two games(Supreme Commander & Sins of A Solar Empire) were about a galactic war against three unique sides, AI War makes no qualms about revealing that you are indeed playing against an AI. AI War can be played single player or cooperatively, but always against two AI’s. While this might seem like a throwback(no death match), it is in fact refreshingly original as the AI you face are actually way more powerful than you.

This is the core of AI War, you are always going against an AI that is technological, numerically, monetarily superior than you. What’s even more interesting is the concept of AI progression and aggression. As you colonise faster, you are seen as a bigger threat by the AI and they behave a lot more aggressively. At every 30 minutes intervals(the timing of this can be set before the start of a campaign)and certain actions you take, the AI progression number increases. That basically means the AI gets better technology and more advanced.
 

This leads to a constant push pull effect, turtle and the AI just gets too powerful, attack too fast and the AI gets aggressive. Finding the right balance of taking systems when it is needed(for resources) can get pretty hard especially if you play with the more higher difficulty AI.

Piss the AI off a lot and the AI gets a free attacking fleet that will attack one of your planets when the timer runs out. This is akin to a tower defense game where you have to face a wave of enemies. At this point, AI War borrows some tower defense elements. To secure your planet, you need to build defenses around wormholes that enemy ships jump into.



Research points are limited per planet(2000 per planet). Which means you can only research 1 or 2 new technology wholed up in a single planet. To keep up with the AI, you’ll be forced to colonise new planets or use a sneaky tactic of research point raiding(send in research ships to enemy planets to steal research points). You could build a mobile constructor to build buildings in planets not in your control. This should allow you to set up a base of operations in planets that are not completely secure yet.

There are plenty of intricate strategies such as these in the game. Use of transport ships, repair vehicles, mobile shield generator, mobile constructors, you could think of many new strategies or tactics to counter a particular challenge. AI War brings out the creative side of any strategy gamer.



I just love the fact that I had to think of new strategies to overcome some of the AI planets. Not many RTS games can do this since half the time, you just need to find a single magic formula that wins it for you. Not so in AI War. It just so exquisitely designed, clearly the work of a lengthy beta test and a dedicated developer behind it.

Make no mistakes, AI War is an incredibly polished game with a great RTS mechanic, well balanced, and an original entry in today’s age of sequels, constant retreads, and lack of innovation. AI War: Fleet Command is a fresh new take on the RTS genre and a reminder of possibly where innovation truly lies with these days; the indie developers. Bravo Arcen Games, if you love RTS and strategy games, you have to play AI War: Fleet Command.

Pros:

• Originality
• Very challenging
• Diversity of units and strategies
• Immense scale and scope
• Addictive gameplay
• Very impressive AI(you’ll have to play to see for yourself)

Cons:

• Not the sharpest looking game

Rating: 8.8/10

Verdict: Gordon Freeman of RTS’s!


AI War: Fleet Command Demo
Official Site
Steam Product Page

Torchlight Review

 

The names Max and Erich Shaefer may bring nostalgic memories to PC gamers. They of course were co creators to the seminal Diablo and Diablo II from Blizzard(previously Blizzard North) which was a landmark moment in action RPG games(in fact it invented it). Runic Games is the name of the new start up and Torchlight is their first offering. A Diablo clone which gets the formula right.

 

 

It’s got the same addictive quality of Diablo which is either a good or bad thing depending on how you see it. Prepare to find time fly by as you rush through a dungeon to get every single gold and loot drop. As it is from the guys that did Diablo, I suppose they know the right formula to mix combat with loot drops. The perfect reward to action ratio which will suck your soul.

 

 

What’s there to say about the gameplay that you have probably known by know. It plays like Diablo. You can take control of any three different class type, the Alchemist(Wizard), Destroyer(Warrior) and blabla(the ranger/ranged weapon expert). You then go into Torchlight, a town gripped with a growing evil. You find that the source of this comes from deep within the mines and venture into it to fight whatever monster you face.

 

 

Really, the story’s nice, but irrelevant. You’ll be too busy just killing stiff and picking stuff up. What’s brilliant about Torchlight is that its got some truly smart things in it that improves on the Diablo formula. Ever had your inventory full in between a dungeon raid and ever wished you could somehow sell some of the stuff away(instead of just dropping them)? Now you can using your pets to quickly run back to town to sell it for you.

 

 

Yes you have a pet, which is very fashionable I suppose(hey WoW has them). It’s really your personal slave to be frank. Go sell this crap boy! You could also equip your dog(or cat) rings and necklace to improve its stats and even teach it to use spells. You have merchants, quest givers, gambling orcs, robot bards and a whole host of characters that sever to give you quests, sell and buy your stuff, and allow you to make more money.

 

 

There is even a shared treasure chest that allow you to share items between your different characters or saves. Absolute genius move. It’s the minor improvements like this from the Diablo formula that makes Torchlight a polished, refinement of the classic. While the lack of a multiplayer may turn off some people(purely single player), Torchlight manages to hold on to your attention with its loot collection.

 

 

As a roughly 1 year development time from a relatively small and new studio, it’s evident that Runic is a studio that is lead by very experienced and talented people that I have no doubt has a lot more to offer to the games industry and gamers. Torchlight at USD$19.99 is a definitely buy if you’re an action RPG fan.

 

Pros:

• Addictive loot mechanic
• Many refinements and improvements over Diablo
• Great game for jumping in for a while

 

Cons:

• Addictive
• Light on cutscenes and story

 

Verdict:  Loot Fest!

 

Rating: 8/10

 

Price: USD$19.99

 

Steam Product Page