Tag: game review

Dino D-Day a new take on World War II

dino dday market

Dino D-Day is a multi-player PvP shooter that combines the ever-popular World War II theme with bloodthirsty dinosaurs like from Jurassic Park.

In this alternate history line, Adolf Hitler has succeeded in resurrecting and training dinosaurs to join his Nazi armies in a bid for conquest. The Allies desperately try to catch up with their own dinosaur research as they battle across Europe and the Mediterranean. Each side has seven playable characters each with unique weapons and abilities, even – yes you guessed it – dinosaurs equipped with machine guns. It’s a unique spin from indie developer 800 North that attempts to combine two popular genres, with mixed results.

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Dino D-Day plays out like most multiplayer FPS games. The two sides spawn on a map and battle it out for victory. Not much new there. The maps are nice, but the game’s strengths are in it’s classes. You may prefer playing one of the soldiers equipped with specific World War II armaments, or try your hand as a genetically modified dinosaur with their special attacks. It’s kinda cool charging down others as an armored Desmatosuchus or pouncing on prey as a Velociraptor. It’s different, but takes some getting used to and there are some possible balancing issues to be sure.

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Unfortunately there is no tutorial to speak of, so before jumping in a live game you probably should create your own game with bots to practice on. There are just some class specific key strokes you’ll have to figure out, but luckily there is a plethora of goats around each map to practice on. Soon you’ll be spitting acid in everybody’s faces. Well, maybe. I stumbled around for quite awhile, learning by trial and error. I was lucky enough to run into a friendly player named Buddy the Space Parrot who showed me a few great tips.

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The game itself is okay, but depends entirely on a multiplayer community, which is fairly sparse. It’s going to be hard to compete with free to play games like Team Fortress 2 with a much larger base. Hardcore pvp gamers will find a rather small amount of regular players to tussle with. There is no single player campaign, though you could use bots if you wish. In either case, unless you are a major dino fan, the play value of Dino D-Day is not so great.

Beat Hazard – Shadow Operations Unit

beat hazard shadow operations unit

Beat Hazard – Shadow Operations Unit is a DLC package that adds custom ships to the fleet, each with different handling, firing patterns and abilities.

Each ship has it’s own set of missions to increase your fleet ranking as well as it’s own leader board to compete with other players. These new ship powers expand the depth of Beat Hazard, and each ship seems to handle a bit differently. Different acceleration, gun speeds, firing arcs and even an auto-aim system that is rather noobish but great when inebriated.

beat hazard ship hangar

The Shadow Operations Unit DLC also adds Steam Workshop to Beat Hazard, letting players design and upload their own ships for other players to enjoy. Although a lot of these workshop ships are odd or fanciful, there are lots of interesting ones to try. There’s a TIE fighter and X-Wing for the Star Wars fans, crazy celebrity heads and a cool Dr. Who Tardis.

beat hazard work shop

The The Shadow Operations Unit DLC lets you edit just about everything for a new ship, so break out the craziest images you have. You don’t need to add it to the Workshop, so you can make your own private Beat Hazard ship if you’d like.

beat hazard ship editor

While the new ships are a nice addition to an already kick-ass game, I was a bit disappointed there were no new enemy ships. Or new bosses. Or new power ups. Or new weapons. While worthwhile, get this DLC in a bundle or sale if you can.

Empire: Total War in the 18th century

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Empire: Total War is a historical mix of turn based strategy and real time tactical battles set in the late 18th century.

With another notch in it’s gaming franchise, Creative Assembly takes the same winning concepts that were so successful in it’s earlier games and tweaks them for the world in the time of Napoleon, focusing on Europe and the two colonial theaters of North America and India in the 18th century.

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The game is broken down into two separate parts. The first part is The Grand Campaign – the turn based strategy on the world map that moves your armies, maintains your cities and engages in intrigue and diplomacy. A new feature, the technology tree, allows research improvements and benefits for your Empire’s military, industry, and overall philosophy. In each game you choose an Empire to run, victory conditions to accomplish and campaign length. Be warned, even a ‘short’ campaign of just 50 years is a long game, requiring hours of strategic thinking as you flex your intellectual might on multiple fronts. Thankfully there is a tutorial set in colonial America called the ‘Road to Independence campaign’ that teaches you the basics.

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The second part of Empire:Total War is the real time tactical battles when two armies collide and you deploy and order your troops in combat. The battleground takes place on various terrain maps from rolling hills to open fields to strongholds and fortifications (my favorite is siege warfare). Use natural features like ‘high ground’ and forests to your advantage. Various types of infantry, cavalry and artillery are yours to command. There’s even some great naval battles where armadas duke it out on the high seas. Each unit has it’s own strength, accuracy and morale that affect it’s combat ability – militiamen may be quick and cheap to recruit, but don’t count on them too much to hold the line! The level detail is excellent. You can even zoom in and watch the individual soldiers shoot and fight as they strive for victory.

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There are hundreds of hours of single player game play here, but there’s also multiplayer battles where you can match up versus other online players. However there is no online play for The Grand Campaign. That is probably a good thing since those multiplayer games would take forever to finish. Overall I enjoyed the game a lot and reached 100% achievements. The battles could get monotonous at times but the AI was usually good without major flaws to exploit. Depending on the size of your campaign, there could be too much micro-managing, but usually if you’re doing that well you can put most things on auto-pilot where local administrators choose what they think is best, letting you be free to concentrate on what is important. If you like historical battles or any of the Total War series, then Empire should be a vital slot in your gaming library.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

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Defense Grid: The Awakening from Hidden Path Entertainment is thought by many to be THE tower defense game for the PC.

Hordes of aliens are invading and your job is to strategically place fortified towers to channel these enemies for annihilation through a maze of death. Doesn’t that sound nice? Plan your strategy by making choke points so your various towers can wreak havoc before the aliens can disable the power core and overrun the base.

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For each level, you get advance knowledge the aliens are coming and their expected route of attack. The alien vanguard is light but each wave gets stronger and more numerous so it takes more and more towers to take them out. An ‘incoming’ bar at the top shows what’s coming next so you can plan an effective defense. Beware the bosses with special abilities as they are truly powerful and will give your most carefully laid plans lots of trouble. You gain resources to to upgrade and build more towers from killing aliens and having power cores in your containment facility, which the aliens are trying to reach and disable. Stop them at all costs!

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The graphics in Defense Grid are stunning, the music is terrific and even the commentary is memorable. It is single player only, but each level has multiple challenges for the die-hard tower defense lovers. The achievements are difficult and actually feel like true accomplishments. There are also several DLCs for even more action, including one that hilariously parodies the Portal franchise. The developers for this indie game are very good about responding and interacting with players.

Dwarfs!? and the Power of 2

Dwarfs!? is an clever 2D arcade game from indie developer Power of Two where you control a dwarven colony as they dig deep underground, looking for treasure but always stumbling into dangerous caves and hostile denizens who threaten their very survival. Silly dwarfs. They soooo crazy! They just can’t stop…

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Killing Floor Co-op Survival Horror FPS

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Killing Floor is a dark, gritty and terrifying indie game where co-op players battle to survive after a biological contagion releases cloned bloodthirsty human mutations upon the streets of London.

Originally developed as a mod for Uneal Tournament 2004, it became popular enough to release as a stand alone video game in 2009 by Tripwire Interactive and is still supported by the devs to this day, with an active player base.

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Killing Floor is a first person shooter, with each match taking place in one of dozens of unique maps around England, where the players fight waves of zombie-like hordes until the ‘boss’ Patriarch appears to wreak havoc and the match ends in victory or death. It’s survival horror right at it’s very core. Players earn money by killing specimens and staying alive each wave, and between waves they may buy or sell weapons and body armor at a trader while it’s temporarily safe.

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Each player may select a perk at the start of the match and switch between waves. Each perk is like a character class, and gives bonuses to certain items and play style. Each level up to a max of 6 gives increased bonuses, and Perks are leveled up using specifics to each class.

  • Field Medic – Bonuses to healing and body armor with slight movement bonus.
  • Support Specialist – Damage bonuses when using shotguns and welding bonus.
  • Sharpshooter – Damage bonuses when using sniping weapons and scoring headshots.
  • Commando – Damage bonuses when using assault weapons
  • Berserker – Damage bonuses using melee weapons with movement bonus and damage reduction.
  • Firebug – Damage bonuses when using fire weapons and resistance to fire.
  • Demolitions – Damage bonuses when using explosives.

Beginner tip: Until you have a perk at level 5, you will always start a match with a knife and a pistol, so the best perk to start with is the Sharpshooter for it’s bonus damage using pistols as well as head shots. If you pick anything else you’re just gimping yourself, and the team. You can switch perks after the next wave when you have enough money to buy a better weapon.

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Killing Floor can be played single player or co-op multiplayer up to a team of 6, with the game scaling automatically to fit the number of players and difficulty level. As either increases, so does the number and strength of most of the specimens coming to kill you. This makes team playing very important and players who don’t work together usually don’t last very long. Up to 32 zeds at a time randomly appear at various spawn points on each map, and head towards the nearest player. This means these mutated creatures could easily appear from above or behind your position and surprise you if you’re not careful.

Killing Floor also supports custom mods from players covering anything from new maps and items to new perks and profiles. I recently played a map which was a replica of Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings. Trippy. A great feature is if you join a server that is using mods, they will be downloaded automatically for you. You can also find and install them manually if you wish to play solo, or even set up your own server.

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Killing Floor has a large number of downloadable content (DLCs) that are mostly cosmetic, providing different skins for the player or new items such as the gold plated AK47. The new weapons are roughly equivalent to existing weapons so these DLCs are mostly for show and to support the developers. The Commando Chicken outfit seems to be popular.

killing floor dlcs

Although basically Killing Floor is about killing the crazed mutated specimens and surviving the match, the replay value is there due to the dynamics of team play, different strategies and random enemy spawns. Some teams may ‘camp’ a certain area so they know the direction the zeds must come from and try to defeat them with massed firepower, where other teams may keep moving around the map, kiting the zeds so as not to be surrounded. Both tactics are viable depending on the map and the players but make no mistake – this game is challenging. Even the best players will find themselves getting eaten more often than not on the higher difficulties. The simple yet clever game play in Killing Floor is what makes it so enjoyable.

Zeno Clash a surreal fantasy world

Zeno Clash is an first person fighting game from Chilean developer Ace Team set in a surreal fantasy world best understood while on mind altering substances. Playing the role of Ghat, the son of a bizarre creature called Father-Mother, whose ‘children’ form the most powerful clan in the city of…

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