Phoenix Online Studios has finally released their first Episode of the The Silver Lining. Which used to be called King’s Quest IX the Silver Lining, until they were forced to change the name. Episode 1 is the first of 5 episodes which are supposedly going to be released from now till next year. From what I hear Episoed 1 is more like an overhyped tech demo with 10 minutes of gameplay. Not mention having a highly annoying narrator. I have not downloaded it because you need to have an account in order to get it. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, but guess what the member’s area is called? The Phoenix Online Fan Club. Once again the arrogance of this group shows through. Word on the street says they are looking at making a commercial project after this. And what better way to harvest email addresses to spam later. In the past they have posted several articles how to make a game before they released anything more than a buggy demo. When they were looking for beta testers, they created a fake demo with intentionally added bugs. It’s not like their demo was bug free to begin with. It seems after 8 years of development I think I can wait some more before I have any desire to try it out.

I tried the demo for Supreme Commander 2 this week. And man what a let down. It’s like Square and GPG turned an original novel into a mass market paperback romance. The first mistake: you have to have Steam to download the demo. I can see why GPG is worried about piracy. But its the demo for crying out loud. And then guess whats next you are forced to watch nearly a whole minute of company logo animations. You better be able to skip it in the real

Their technology tree is the only thing that differentiates it from a futuristic Command and Conquer clone. You cant even queue up units if you don’t have the resources available. You can set a factory to repeat but sometimes you just want 20 light tanks then 5 AA, 45 Heavy tanks. I guess that is too complicated for the average mass gamer. (Which are who they are obviously shooting for. Definitely not fans of SupCom 1. And fans of Total Annihilation well… there’s a reason TA still has an active community.) Engineers can not help others to build structures and only 3 engineers can assist a factory at a time.

There are no tiers either. You have to research technology in order to get unit upgrades as well as the severely weakened experimental units. I really get bored of researching the same techs every single game. Like in WC3 and AOE. They change it up a little bit by having a lot of a choices and having to research the proper prerequisites. Apparently the majority of the gameplay for multiplayer is planning which techs to research first.

The strategic map view is pretty much pointless. Partly because the maps are tiny. The unit textures for the demo at least are super bright and washed out like your playing with model airplanes. I mean bright blue and bright yellow have never went together. The poly count is higher however. And the water doesn’t look half as good as in SupCom1.

Screenshots
Supcom UEF ACU
Supcom 2 UEF ACU
Supcom Waves
Supcom 2 Water

And the story consisted of annoying talking heads bickering. I will still google the cut scenes however.

If you have never played Total Annihilation, Spring or Supreme Commander then maybe this could be a fun game, but for those who have played a real RTS look again. All in all it looks a lot more like a prequel or even a no brand name rip off than a sequel.

I tried out a few lighthearted action games a little while ago. And I enjoyed them immensely.

So I recently heard about a new Lego game in development. Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 is scheduled to be released sometime next year. So I figured I should check out the Lego games they have already released to see if they are as good as I have heard. I found the demos up on Download.com. You can also check Amazon’s pages on Lego PC Games for more information such as screenshots and video. I was able to try the demos for Star Wars II(which are episodes 4-6). Batman and Indiana Jones. The demo for Lego Star Wars I won’t install on XP 64 or Vista, or Windows 7. You have to install it on XP or older and copy it over to the newer OS’s. The Star Wars and Indiana Jones Demos each have a level to play and then the option to free play that level again. Which means you can go through getting all the secrets you missed before with whatever characters you have won up to that point. You can change your character anytime in free play.

The Batman game lets you play as either the heroes or the villains. You also periodically find different suits that give Batman or Robin special powers like demolition suit or magnet shoes. Its good to see a tie with all those old action figures. I always thought they were strange when the tv show never had all those power suits.

In each of the games you can play single player and switch between characters or instead play two player cooperative. Each character has specific moves or powers they can use. To beat a level, one has to switch between these characters in order to play through to end. And there are a lot of secrets to find. Which for me at least are really hard to find. Sometimes you can see a secret area but you have to figure out how to get past the obstacles in front of it.

These games are quite enjoyable. I don’t know why its so funny to watch Chewbacca rip a Lego Storm Trooper’s arms off but it is. The characters have some entertaining moves which allow you to blast your enemies back to bricks. The Star Wars games are older and have some strange bugs and a slight weirdness to the camera views but other than that they run pretty smooth. The graphics look great especially in the batman game. I wonder what it would be like to have a photo realistic Lego game, because they are getting closer to it. Each of the games have similar mechanics but the puzzles are quite different making each enjoyable in its light.

Lately I have been taking a break from learning ruby and working on my game. I beat the campaigns for Warcraft 3 Frozen throne and Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. Though I cheated on the last Warcraft scenario. The population limit really gets to me. They wanted to focus on squad battles, but the battles are often so chaotic you sometimes have no idea whats happening anyway. In the last level you can only have a population of 100 and they have 2 – 3 sides with a 100 each. With stronger units then I can build. Perfect recipe for a fun level. It just got a little irritating by the end with both story lines being predictable and redundant. Warcraft’s was slighter better though. I mean in Supcom the Aeon princess sacrifices herself at the end of the original campaign and at the end of the expansion. I am very glad to hear Square Enix is working with Gas Powered Games on Supreme Commander 2. It sounds like the story should be vastly improved. Apparently a lot of work has been done on optimization as well, so it will hopefully actually work on regular systems. Personally I think it should be considered a bug when it runs really slow on a Core 2 Quad 2.4 ghz machine with 6 gigs of RAM.

After I updated Supreme Commander to the latest patch I could no longer play the original game. It turns out I had to remove game.prefs from application data and then it worked fine. (The old save files were incompatible but it wasn’t a big deal for me). I really enjoyed going through the campaigns when I found the side I liked best and went with it. I played through the Aeon campaign. It didnt have as many levels as I expected,but each level takes a long time. Throughout the level it slowly expands your area of operations until you have access to the entire map. The best thing about the campaigns is that on many levels you get to start with prebuilt tech 3 bases. Which means you get to jump into the best part of the game, the tech 3 and experimental units. Epic battles oh yeah, with some of the best graphics I’ve seen. Thanks to an ATI Radeon 4870, and Intel E8500 Dual 3.16 ghz with 8gb of RAM. Surprisingly I still get a little lag when playing huge skirmish maps with the larger unit limits. They were right this game requires a monster of a computer. But it does look awesome.

I really like being able to move your queue orders after you place them. Simply hold down shift and you can move the different parts of your queue. Say you want to build a few towers but you change your mind on the exact placement. Just click and drag the unbuilt buildings to their proper location. One thing I notice about supcom is that you constantly have to zoom in and out. Out to make your plans and then In if you want to see the action.

So is digital distribution the next best thing? Instant gratification is quite convenient. I wish more companies would put up their old games for download (for a reasonable fee if they insist). Its funny they have nothing to lose and money to gain. I mean especially with how the economy is. Nintendo’s stance on this is very irritating. If they hadn’t noticed just because they sell some of their old games for the Wii people still want to play it on their PC. Lucas Arts has been the same way except they don’t sell any of their old games. It makes no sense. If they put a really small old game up for download, people will pay for it. I really wish there was a legal way in obtaining these games like Monkey Island and Quest for Glory.

The companies that I have had experience with:
Blizzard: They offer Warcraft 3 and the Expansion Frozen Throne, Starcraft and Diablo II. A little bit pricey for 6+ year old games. And they really should offer their older titles like Warcraft 1 and 2.

Steam: I bought Commander Keen 1-5 for $4.99. Its lame that the huge and bloated steam program is required to download their games but the price was good. They have a big selection but I saw nothing else I’m interested in.

Good Old Games: I bought Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 for $5.99. They have a decent selection which is getting better every week. They are very committed to being DRM Free which is a big plus. They also throw in any extra goodies they can find with your purchase; like pdf manuals, backgrounds, icons, soundtracks. Good old Games is the best option in my opinion.

Speaking of Quest for Glory, I was able to find Hero’s Quest 1 SCI, Quest for Glory 3 and 4 as well as Kings Quest 4 at the used game store Fun Unlimited in Logan, Utah. Which was very exciting. The Quest for Glory 4 cd was scratched but I got them for the license anyways. I never expected to find them all in one place. Since AGD released their QFG2 Remake, now I’m only missing Quest For Glory 5 which is going for $40-50 used. I also got Dungeon Siege 1, which is quite fun to play multiplayer for how simple it is.

I have been playing a lot of Warcraft 3 recently, thanks to Blizzard’s digital downloads. I beat the campaigns for Reign of Chaos last night. So now I’m on to the Frozen Throne campaigns. Now I know why WOW is the most popular MMORPG these days. Blizzard actually spent some time making interesting races with backstories. Its not the best plot but it keeps you interested. The heroes really make Warcraft 3 stand out from other RTS games. Though they should make more of the settings changeable in game like the population limit (90 for regular and 100 for expansion). You can up the food limit to 300 in the the constants editor in the Frozen Throne Map editor. But they really should have done that in game. I know their idea is to focus on smaller squad based battles. But who doesn’t want epic battles some times. Most of all the maps have really limited gold which I find very frustrating. When your heroes, and armies are finally ready you attack the enemy only to find empty bases because they ran out of gold. So thats another thing to change in the map editor. I understand once you get better at it then it would be easy enough to beat the enemies before all the gold runs dry. I guess I’m used to long epic battles like TA, TAK, Supcom so it takes some getting used too.
A really fun multiplayer hero based multiplayer map for Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne is called Defense of the Ancients. You can get the map with really hard AI opponents at Dotahomer’s DOTA AI You control a hero whose job it is to defend your town and destroy the enemy’s. There are tons of heroes and items to chose from so you don’t get bored. Its a little lame that DOTA only has one map but you get used to it.

Well I have to say I found the ending of Last Scenario quite disappointing. Enough so that I didn’t actually finish it. I just watched someones terrible recording on youtube to see the ending. (They clicked through all the dialogue so I had to try to pause it on every dialogue box. Youtube’s seeking is terrible so you can only jump to certain checkpoints in the file. That’s probably because of it having a .flv container. But it was extremely annoying. Why else would I want to watch the ending of a fan rpg that has shoddily recorded oldschool graphics? Its not like its footage of FFXIII or anything)

It starts out and I found Hilbert the main character kind of annoying, and naive following a standard plot. But then everything gets thrown out the window and your traveling around the world as a Special Ops team (With you armed with a bow). You find yourself caught in a long series of events. And all these events have to do with every kingdom you set foot in falling to chaos. Assassinations, political intrigue, the works. Through all this you get acquainted with the 8 playable characters and their troubled back-stories. This is one ambitious fan project. Unfortunately the ending just doesn’t deliver. Around 25 hours of playing and around level 65 you get to the end of the storyline. The final storyline boss is in a cave that you use your airship to get to. But the boss is just too strong and there is no way to buy the sacred orbs that heal your entire party in a battle. So you have to level your character. And then level. And then level. Oh yeah and then level some more. I tried with my party at level 75 and it wasnt good enough. (I probably could have fought smarter but it was just to annoying for me to bother.) Why would I want to level up to the max. Level 99 i think. It is probably very doable at around 85 with all the ultimate weapons. (You always find better weapons then you can ever buy.) There are extra dungeons to go to get those ultimate weapons but they have no story just fight lots of monsters. Then you go to the next area. It just didn’t keep my interest. So if you actually want to finish I would suggest to try to do more leveling up before each next plot segment.

This game is quite linear- almost always only one way to do everything. This game is heavily inspired by the final fantasy series. You always have to have airships. The magic is somewhat like materia but it doesn’t level up. You only have to attach spell card to the player and then they know the spell. An annoying thing was most spellcards come with modifiers. Like this offensive spell takes away a % of your health and strength. Quite annoying. Sometimes the modifiers helped so your character has useless spells equipped just for their effects.

Some things I found lame. Like you have 8 playable characters at the end of the game but you can only battle with 4. And you can only switch the party at save points. The rest of the party is just useless and just give up if the four battle characters die.
You cant change what type of weapons your players have. For instance Hilbert has a bow and thats your only choice. You can get better bows but thats it. So basically the different weapon types have absolutely no meaning. Bow, sword, axe, staff, throwing daggers, crystal, staff, spear they all act the same. Just the various types of bow have a higher attack then others.
The monsters are also not very exciting. And the game follows a very scripted pattern(for how crazy the plot is) Go fight monsters. Get treasure Fight big boss monster. Get more treasure. Rinse and repeat. I guess thats a over generalization of most RPGs but not unfounded. Up ahead I see a save point and a door. That means save and heal before the boss and then your most probably free for a while. Many monsters are lame like walls and books.

Well i cant deny that it is a interesting game. I didn’t put up a link because I never found an official site for it. Maybe this was the last fan project the guy did. I would not surprised if it is. (The scope is huge for a fan game. It even has it’s own board game. But I never bothered playing more then 2 or 3 times). So just google Last Scenario and you will find it.

Recently I have been looking at different RPG’s (partly) for research purposes. I am looking for things to add to the Betrayer. I would like it to be more dynamic and have a more immersive feel. Considering the fact that I’m a cheapskate and don’t own any of the game consoles other then NES, I searched the internet for a good free RPG. Unfortunately Open Source isn’t very good in this department (for non-MMORPGS). I wanted a good old school 2D RPG. And what I found was Ahriman’s Prophecy by Amaranth Games. You can grab it on Cnet. The graphics are clean and look great. Each different town has its own tileset which helps create a unique feeling and atmosphere for each. It is advertised as 50+ hours of gameplay. I didn’t clock my time to the finish but it did last a while. Even though I cheated and used a walkthrough to help.
The story is pretty good though obviously meant for a game. To roughly simplify it: Find the 6 relics to destroy the evil monster who’s being summoned. Even though the dialog between your characters is minimal I felt like I got to know them and their personalities.
My biggest qualm is that the combat gets tiresome real fast. Battles happen right on the map where you have to press the spacebar repeatedly until the opponent or you die. The magic also leaves something to be desired. Maybe I’m missing the obvious but I never figured out how to get to the higher level spells in combat. The ending is also a little lackluster. You defeat the boss and then it says you win and then goes to the game-over screen. I think a unique picture at the end would have done a lot for it.

And on the plus side it also worked fairly good under wine, except it would crash on the first island. So if your bored and like RPG’s I would recommend it, it’s only a 10.32 mb download. If anyone knows of any sweet RPG’s or parts you like in them, post a comment.