MIddle Tier Middle-Earth

I made an interesting find in the local independent game store this weekend: a used copy of the now out-of-print PC game Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring. It must have been the last game made using the book licenses before the huge blitz of movie-licensed ones in the early '00s. It was only ten bucks, and the novelty and curiosity of the item, and it's good condition, complete in box and all, sold me on it.

War of the Ring is a 3D RTS very much in the style of Warcraft III. Very much in that style. You begin the campaign with two missions where you're playing an army of dwarves led by Gimli, son of Gloin. From there, you have the option to play as the forces of Gondor (if I'm not mistaken) led by Boromir, or take on another mission to track down Gollum. I didn't try that one, so I'm not sure who the player faction is.

I only made it as far as completing the tutorial missions and a few of the main campaign as the forces of good, because for some reason I was unable to get game saves to work in Windows 7. I did some quick searching online, and the suggested fixes for Vista had no effect. Compatibility mode also, no dice. My player profile would save, recording what mission I was on, but there was no mid-mission or quicksave ability, which is frustrating in an RTS, where missions can sometimes go beyond an hour, and a single mis-click can wreck your whole strategy.

In the end, while I thought War of the Ring was interesting, I still have something like 70 missions of Warcraft III that I've never played between the rest of the main game and expansion, and as dumb as Warcraft lore is, Blizzard are the kings of play and feel, and at least I'm less familiar with that game's lore than that of LotR. Going forward, I'll continue my play through more of Warcraft III.

On the subject of Blizzard games, Overwatch has really convinced me of its worth. It's an undeniably great game. You could make a case for it being nothing more than three game types on a handful of maps, but even so, there are 21 highly differentiated characters that all feel great and are enjoyable to play, and somehow there is even some modicum of balance in how they all check and are checked in terms of power by multiple others. It's team-based arena FPS action with the character design of a fighting game. The matches aren't overlong, and even though the 'progression' and extrinsic rewards for play are limited, it's hard not to jump right back into another after viewing the after action report. It's a real fun time.

I'm continuing to play more Regicide, as well. I'm in the middle of the middle of three "campaigns" of 10 scenarios as the Blood Angles. If it doesn't get too difficult, I'll probably finish them all and maybe even the two Ork campaigns, as well. The combination of Chess, XCOM, and 40K is just what I crave, apparently.

Regicide update: On reflection, the AI is pretty dumb sometimes, moving itself into check, which really shouldn't be allowed. Neat game, but even so, I think I'm going to move on.

Violence in the Future

If you believe the games I've been playing lately, the future is a very violent place, and gets grimmer the further you get away from the present.

Overwatch is the closest of games I've played this week to being set in the present. It's pretty upbeat in presentation, but still shockingly violent. All these characters do is kill one another, over and over, in an endless war of attrition over a few square feet of ground. I didn't think I'd be down for this Blizzard game, but as it turns out, I was. I am. I may as well jump in with both feet; I'm going to try to play every character to some degree and enjoy myself at least well enough to get my sixty dollars' worth.

V game Vanquish is several more decades further out into the future, and really shows the beginning of the darkening of the timeline. There are moments of cheekiness and levity, mostly around our rogueish hero Sam Gideon, but also a dark harbinger of things to come, as he and his principal enemies pilot or comprise cybernetic power armor suits and renegade AI routines. Vanquish is superb. I don't know if I've played a 3rd person cover-based shooter that is as fun to play. The jet-slide mobility and bullet-time mode, decent and varied assortment of weapons, and lively pacing all come together for a very frenetic and intense game. To top it all off, it looks great, and runs like a dream on the PS3. I never noticed it dropping any frames, and it felt like a nice 60 fps the entire time I played.

And now to the far, far future, where the world is grim and dark, indeed.

Warhammer 40,000.

Regicide paints a picture for us of what war will be like in the future--turn based, and very much like Chess, but with the added deadliness of firearms and bludgeoning and ripping and tearing melee weapons. A frightful vision indeed. It makes for a fun and interesting game, though. You wouldn't think adulterating Chess with XCOM like tactical combat would be anything other than a mess, but it works, somehow.

Storm of Vengeance also represents for us future war in the abstract. It could be seen as a sort of supply lines  and logistics simulation, one supposes. It is also port of an iOS game that itself is like a rethemed Plants Vs. Zombies. Dark Angels Vs. Orks, you might call it. Not a lot of effort, relative to most games, was put into this port. It's not terrible, but you might call it bad and not be far off base. It's the type of game that doesn't do just a whole lot to justify its existence, unless you are that into the 40K theme it uses.

Dawn of War II is a recurring nightmare of a simulation of the horrors of conflict in the awful, dark future. The single mission I undertook was a horrific vision of brother Blood Raven killing brother Blood Raven to ends I could not fathom. A dark vision, indeed. More scrying will be necessary to gather more insight into what the future holds for our doomed species.