Duel of Champions: Game Design Review

Duel of Champions is an online card game by Ubisoft based around the Might and Magic franchise sharing the same units, factions and art style of the main franchise.  I 've played quite a bit of Duel of Champions now, probably 100+ hours and own approximately 4000+ cards at the time of this post.

What I liked:
Core game is solid- As a card game DOC is pretty solid. You have 6 different factions each with a different feel and a variety of tactics. Personally if this was a real card game which you could buy, I would definitely buy this with a caveat. It has to be a "Living Card Game" similar to Fantasy Flight where you buy set packs rather than buying random boosters.

Card Art- The card graphics are solid really appealing and quite large full of fantastical detail.

Interface-  A solid interface with good solid buttons which feels solid. Interface gives it a very professional feel to the whole thing. They've recently revamped the searching and deckbuilding so its easier than ever before to look for cards. It is meant to be played on both iPad and PC and the interface feels like a solid compromise.


What I disliked:
Hero centric gameplay can be unbalanced- The game is centred around Heroes and many Heroes will have certain advantages making you play in a particular style. For example, you have the Necropolish Hero fleshbane that increases all Incorporeal creatures health by 1. Clearly you have to play the deck with incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures are weak against decks with lost of magic creatures so if you get such a match up you know you're almost certain to lose. Because of this, there are certain Heroes that are viable at higher levels of play while others end up 'gimmick' Heroes. I'm not sure if there's a way to get around this per se except maybe to create more balanced Heroes but I wonder if it might be possible to play best 2 out of 3 or with a side board.

Randomness- Because of the randomness of the draw, sometimes you will get a bad hand with no low level cards making it difficult to make a come back if you lose momentum during the battle. It doesn't often happen if you build your deck right but I wonder if it would be possible to tweak the rules so you always start with a certain number of low cost cards. This is something that has always plague these sorts of card games so I wouldn't necessarily hold it again this particular card game.

Free2play Economy- Duel of Champions has gone through numerous economic changes with a significant change with the release of Base Set 2. The main and biggest problem of the game is the Free2play economy and way cards are given to you.

In the game you have gold (currency you earn by playing), seals (currency you purchase) and Wildcards (bonus cards you earn or you get in certain superpacks you have to buy through seals) Unfortunately, as with any F2P game I personally felt there's still way too much grinding to purchase packs. Furthermore, what you get in the pack is completely random. There is no way to actually to buy cards just for one faction. Like the Stronghold faction and want to increase the cards? Sorry you'll buy the booster pack which will give a random set of cards which may come from any faction. And like a real life collectible game, the rarity is all random so good luck trying to get those rare cards to complete your deck!

Until recently, you had to pay 50 000 gold to buy starter deck for each faction every single time. Only the most recent update have they deemed fit to change this, now you will get a started deck if you defeat an opponent using that faction. Of course, there are also rarer cards for each faction meaning which you'll have to hope you randomly get them.

This is where the Wildcard feature comes in, some time ago they put in a feature where you can sacrifice Wildcards to get the cards you want. Older cards are extremely expensive in terms of Wildcards and Wildcards are hard to earn if you're a F2P player. Overall this leaves older players having to pay to complete their old collections although I think its okay for newer players as they should only be buying from the Base Set 2 sets anyway which cost gol.
There is also no trading in the game meaning the only way to get those rare cards are to either hope they appear in those booster packs or grinding very slowly for wildcards and redeeming in the store.

The combination of all of this and lack of alternative ways to earn specific cards means that I actually ended up not really bothering playing the game for long periods of time. The game is fun but once you hit a certain level, not having those cards starts to hurt your game and deck building abilities.


Lacks Online innovation and social space- For a digital card game, its very traditional. The card game mechanics are easy to grasp and could well be played as a physical card game. But what's even stranger is lack of online innovation in the game. For example, it lacks proper chatrooms, card 'crafting', trading, ability to share your decks with friends and player created avatars. There are premium cards which are nothing more than normal cards with a foil colour on them. I would have thought selling alternate art cards would have been top of the list!

The entire game feels very sterile in a sense and lacks a certain vibrancy about it. It doesn't feel like my account or that I have a vested interested in the game for lack of a better description.

OTK and No creature decks- There are some decks in the game where the opponent will play zero creatures and use spells and direct damage to deal damage to your Hero. These are the infamous One-Turn-Kill decks and No creature decks. There is no real way to play against them because most decks are designed to interact with creatures not fight against spells. So all you do is wait and rush the opponent down and hope the opponent hasn't pulled the right cards to wipe the board. Supposedly the Base Set 2 update fixes this but unfortunately some players have figured out some combinations of these. Beacuse there is no real way for you to interact with the cards the player uses (since most spells are instant) its really down to dumb luck and how fast you play rather than how well you play reducing the game to way more luck than strategy.


Conclusion
As a game, I give it thumbs up, I don't know if it's necessarily the most balanced card game out there and there but it packs enough complexity and variability to make me happy. However, as mentioned I feel the digital aspect of the game really lets me down. It feels too traditional at heart and F2P economy leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I do recommend you try it out anyway but I wouldn't blame you if you leave after playing for a couple of weeks.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth Game Design Review

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a reverse tower defense game by 11-bit studios. Instead of building towers to fend off attackers, you control a commander with a convoy and have to attack towers to travel to the end of the map. Gameplay revolves around buying units or upgrades for your convoy, deploying your commander's special abilities and telling your convoy where to go using the strategic map.

Your commander's special abilities are absolutely crucial for ensuring the survival of the convoy. The commander is an actual unit on the map that will be attacked so you have to be careful when deploying special abilities. The game ends up feeling  more like an action game than a strategy game at times and can get quite busy when you're in the midst of action.


What I liked:
Solid graphics, sound and animation- The presentation is very well done and solid for an indie.

Usability- The gameplay is fairly easy to grasp and well explained considering its unusual concept. You use a map to tell your convoy which turn to take at each intersection and you also get a number on how long it will take to reach each point and the total time to the goal. The strengths and abilities and cost of each unit are well represented and overall easy to understand.


What I didn't like:

Needs more unit variety and strategies- The commander also has limited number of abilities and there are only a handful of units and a handful of slots in the convoy. The combination of fewer units means that the basic strategies are quickly learnt and it became a bit too repetitive.


Commander unit is limited- The deliberate introduction of an in-game commander that has health and can be attacked is clear game design move to improve the action in games like this. Your commander will often weave in and out of fire deploying support abilities while your units take out the towers.

I feel the commander is a bit under utilised because he can't attack directly and can only deploy a very limited number of support abilities. He's no different from your standard tower defence special abilities that a player can normally deploy except he's vulnerable. In other words, he doesn't add enough to the game play. The android version of the game does away with him completely and I don't think anything was loss in the process.

More interesting levels- In a game like this, the levels themselves start to get repetitive because of the nature of the game. There's only so many ways of street combinations and towers before it gets a bit stale. There are some minor missions and challenges but levels themselves are mostly static aside from the towers. I wonder if there's a way to make the levels more dynamic by introducing even more environmental effects, friendly units, optional timed objectives, multiple paths etc

Doesn't feel enough like a true tower defense- In a tower defense game, you'll often have lots of enemy units being thrown at lots of towers. Being a much more intimate game with very few units makes it feel a bit sluggish compared to games like Defense Grid: The Awakening. What I really want to see is a game where you have tens of units streaming past towers and you have to decide which group of units to assist.

Special effects in the upgrade menu- There's a strange 'pan and tilt effect' in the upgrade menu to make it feel more like a futuristic floating 3D menu. It's small but I thought it was a silly as it adds nothing to the game and ends up being distracting rather than cool.

Conclusion
Warzone Anomaly is an indie game by a small indie studio and it is important to acknowledge it for what it is. It is a solid well put together package but it feels like it needs more of something. I didn't have a great time with Warzone Anomaly after a while as I've never really enjoyed playing Tower defense games but if you like Tower defenses you'll probably enjoy this. If don't already enjoy the genre then you might want to check out the demo first.

Defense Grid: The Awakening: Game Design Review

Defense Grid is an indie Tower Defense game by Hidden Path. Having played through the entire campaign I have to say that Defense is grid is a good solid albeit uninnovative tower defense game. I have game as well as the extra DLC maps but I didn't really play the extra maps too much.

There are probably two notable innovations:
3D maps- The maps are 3D in nature where towers on higher levels can shoot at lower level and paths can twist over or under other places. It's not six degrees of freedom as some reviews seem to imply but it does contain more freedom than other 2D tower defense games.

Cores and Resources - You have cores which represent the enemy's goal. The more cores you have left, the faster your resources regenerate. Regeneration of resources also increases the more resources you have. This creates a nice risk/reward dynamic where if you spend too much resources now trying to defend you can make the game harder later in the level but on the other hand, if you don't spend the resources now you might not last the entire level.

There are a couple of minor issues with th game design which I found while playing:
Key board shortuts all over the place- Why place L for "Fire orbital laser" and U for "Upgrade tower"? It's as if we haven't learnt anything from the last 20 years of gaming and still place keys all over the place.

Difficulty increases exponentially all of a sudden- Most of the earlier maps are fairly straight forward and then the difficulty suddenly jumps as the 3D aspects of the game suddenly become much more prominent. The expansion maps are also very tough and they are much more open-ended making the jump from the main game to them hard.

Lack of guide lights- As the maps become more open-endeded it becomes exponentially harder to know the path enemies will take to get to the cores. Especially for maps where there are various levels.Its strange then that there aren't guiding lights showing you the route of the enemies.

Well balanced but could use more special towers or special powers - Nothing you haven't seen before. You have your standard gun towers, flame throwers, artillary, slow-down towers, slow enemies, fast enemies and shielded enemies. Absolutely nothing stands out as unique about this game aside from the polished graphics and gameplay. 

Conclusion
Overall, if you enjoy Tower Defenses, you'll like Defense Grid. You're paying and getting exactly what you expect a solid very polished game with good graphics and well-rounded gameplay and a variety of good game modes. If you prefer an equally solid game but with at least some innovation you'll probably prefer playing a game like Revenge of the Titans.

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood

Brothers in Arms: Earned in blood is a sequel to Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30.

First of all its a game which balances tactics, realism and fun. You can't play it like an action shooter except at the easiest difficulty but its not a hard core simulation like Full Spectrum Warrior or Hidden and Dangerous . In other words a thinking mans FPS but doesn't require you to read a 60 page manual.

I do recommend it however there are a couple of issues I would like to note:

There isn't any way of issuing or queuing orders more complex than 'move' and 'fix the enemy' and you can only point to locations only you can see. It's not a super deal breaker as enemy and game levels are generally designed with this limitation in mind at least against enemy troops as most walls and barriers are invincible against bullets.

The problems with the AI and command system however become more apparent in certain conditions such as when the area is particularly large and you want your troops to head to a landmark but accidentally choose the wrong side of the landmark or when you see an enemy tank and want your troops to distract an enemy tank while you get into position. Just like in real life, bullets do nothing against tank armour. More often than not while you're moving to secure an anti-tank panzerfaust your troops will get killed because they don't move from their location. This also means you can't create orders such as "Starting flanking them when I start firing from this location", you have to manage your troops every step of the way.

Storywise the game weaves in and out of the first game. I believe that some of the levels take place in the same areas during the same time as levels in Road to Hill 30 except your character Joe Hatsock takes a different route from Sgt Matt Baker from the first game. I find this is a bit of a problem in the narrative because the game refers to a number of major incidences in Road to Hill 30 such as character deaths or Baker's actions and I'm unsure what exactly they are referring to. It would definitely make more sense to someone who has played the first game.

I love how real the levels are and how they have been recreated from the real towns. Unfortunately, the game's weather mimics the real conditions during the period of the conflict which means that its always cloudy and grey or raining. Coupled with the grey buildings of the time it makes the game feel a bit dull and drab at times. I sort of wished they had taken some artistic license here but that's just my personal feelings.

One crucial thing which I strong disliked about the game was how they created ficitional biographies and extras of the characters and slipped them into the extras while mixing it up with real biographies and actions of real WWII soldiers without clarifying that the game's characters were fictional. Having never played Brothers in Arms before, I feel that this move diminishes the efforts of the real soldiers during that time by placing them on equal footing as fictional characters because the levels and locations are based on real WWII conflicts and towns and the actions of the fictional characters are based on real actions of real soldiers.

At the moment, the games in Australia and New Zealand are being sold together so definitely get both together if you can so you can properly appreciate the intertwining stories.

Dawn of War Anthology: Box Collection Review

This is my review of the boxed game collection Dawn of War Anthology

I paid $50 for this and its hefty as it contains all the individual cases of all the games and the manuals.
This includes:

• Dawn of War Game of the Year Edition (3 CDs) -> It mentions the collector's art book on the back but unfortunately was left out. :-(
  
• Dawn of War Winter Assault (2 CDs)
• Dark Crusade - 1 DVD
• All the CD-keys work

Fairly weighty, Dark Crusade Anthology is a good buy but aside from from being able to to physical hold the discs and physical manuals, there's nothing here a digital download doesn't already have.
There's actually probably enough space for one extra DVD casing but it's just an extra cardboard support which is a pity :-(. They could have easily fit in another collector's disc. music CD or some sort of exclusive artbook in there.

I consider a bit of a lazy collection as a result. I suspect they had an over production of games and decided to just repackage them.

This has been superceded by the Dawn of War: The Complete Edition with the final expansion Soul Storm so you may as well just get that as a digital download which is now probably cheaper than what I paid for it.

My overall impression is that all of them are very fun games. That being said, here are a couple of things I didn't quite like about the games in particular a number of interface quirks:

• You can't build in places that are covered by the fog of war even if they are well within safe zones like right next to your starting base.
• You can't 'mass activate' an ability for same squad types so you actually have to flick through all of them one by one individually activating them.
• Fleet of foot for the Eldar has to be manually activated. 95% of the time when moving, you'll want Fleet of foot on and you'll want it off when you've stopped. There's no real cool down period so why not have it so you can choose between several different behaviours. 1) Always off. 2) Always on 3) On when moving, off when you stop moving. Instead you have to keep flicking it on and off individually for each squad which is unnecessary micromanagement.
• Eldar Web way gate travel and Imperial Guard underground travel needs to be automated. Troops should automatically use these points if its faster to travel rather than having to manually load them in. Also, the icons at the bottom telling you what sort of building an imperial guard is in don't tell you where they are coming from so you might accidentally ask an Imperial Guard squad from builidng A to travel to building C leaving building A empty even though you actualy wanted the squad from building B to building C. It probably doesn't matter because you could just send them back but the limited size of the barracks etc. mean more unnecessary micromanagement.
• You pay immediately for buildings even if they aren't built regardless how far away your builder unit is. For example, if you ask a builder unit near your base to build a turret in the middle of the map, the turret will be placed there and your builder unit will automatically travel to the place and build it. During this time, it is vulnerable to being destroyed and has very low life. I think a building should only be built when your builder actually reaches the targeted area.
• The Dawn of War Game of the Year Edition Needs to have some sort of ingame help or on-disc PDF so you can check out the tech trees and upgrades before entering battle. I guess you can learn from experience but it would be good to be able to consult some sort of documentation. Winter Assault and Dark Crusade offer manuals so its a little better in that respect.
• Campaigns are a bit short in both Dawn of War and Winter Assault. I consider the Winter Assault campaign very fun more so than Dawn of War.
• Dark Crusade's core gameplay with 7 sides is pretty awesome however the campaign is a bit bland. There are certainly flashes of brilliance with some of the missions like the enemy stronghold but most of the missions pretty much involve different maps but the same objectives. There isn't any alternate stories to experience and there's no real replay value after you finished it aside from replaying it to see your first-choice faction's stronghold event.

Tiberian Sun + Firestorm Review

Just a couple of comments about the games which I've just finished:

Graphics and Art Direction
Comparing Firestorm and Tiberian Sun, I feel that Firestorm is actually more along the lines of what I felt Tiberian Sun should have been. The original Tiberian Sun suffered from brown and grey with only the occassional green, blue and orange Tiberian to brighten it up. Firestorm on the other hand introduces a variety Tiberium flora and fauna making the game more colourful, more organic and definitely gives that sense of just how alien Tiberian is and how its threatening the Earth.

Campaign and Storyline
One thing I liked about Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert was the fact that briefings made you feel like you were really a commander of your troops by placing you in the first person perspective. In Tiberian Sun however they removed that by having you play as Commander Mcneil, and the movies had you watching him do things. This change resulted in a loss of personal involvement. I'm happy that they reinstated this in Firestorm where they address you personally during briefings making your computer seem like a real battle console. I wouldn't mind however if they actually assigned you a name as it does seem somewhat strange in the briefings.

With regards to the plot, in Tiberian Sun, Kane and Slavic barely makes an appearance. Most of the time, it's just you receiving briefings from General Soloman similar to the first although Kane and Slavic are often talked about. You seem to only be chasing after them rather than battling them.

Also the GDI and Nod storylines intertwine but its hard to figure out where exactly on the overall time line you are on because the times they occur in can be different and you don't really see the same events from a different perspective. Instead you often play events that occur before or after the event in the other sides storyline.

I really like how in Firestorm that Cabal gets more involved in the GDI and Nod campaign. I particularly enjoyed his creepy mocking laughter as he launches cyborg attacks against you.

Gameplay & Interface
Still fairly fun as each side is different from the other. I do still feel that Nod still seems bit weaker than GDI even with the subterranean units. I guess the reason is Nod units are weaker and cost about the same or even more

Harvester AI remains a mess with harversters trying to return to refineries across the map. The only way around this is to have only one refinery.

Controlling Jumpset Infantry is more annoying than fun as you can't ask them to stay flying. They keep trying to land after eliminating one target.

I've also been trying to get the carryalls to automatically pick up harvesters and deposit them at the refinary but I can't see to do that which is a step back from Dune II

There are actualy a number of advanced options that you can set if you bother to read the manual including:
Patrol cycles
You can set up waypoints so units will automatically repair if damaged.

Conclusion
Overall, it's still worth playing now and there's no reason not to try it out now that it's free. Firestorm just seems more fun to me overall even though its shorter.

Don't forget, you can download the first three games in the Command and Conquer Universe here.

Front Mission 5 Translation

Completely, slipped under the radar but Front Mission 5 (which was never released in the US) has an English translation. Check it out here.

Majesty 2 Released + My Majesty Review

Previously on my original blog (now closed) I posted a review on Majesty. Here's what I wrote (slightly edited):

Majesty is an interesting fantasy kingdom game which is similar to Populous or Dungeon Keeper. You manage buildings rather than individual units and collect taxes to fund your kingdom. Heroes are your main units and although you pay to recruit them, you don't have direct control over them. Instead they will do whatever suits their character class. For example, if they are a rogue, they will explore and loot treasure chests. If they are a warrior, they will buy armour and weapons from the blacksmith before going off for monster hunting. To earn money, your tax collector will then collect taxes from your buildings such as the blacksmithwhich you can then spend on upgrading your kingdom or building your buildings. You can motivate your heroes to act by placing bounties onareas you want to explore or monsters you want slain.

It is both frustrating and fun to see your heroes running around doing what they like at first. But as you understand how they 'think' and who they work well with, it becomes easier to manage them. Sometimes they still act completely silly like fighting against overwhelming odd but that's what heroes are like after all. As a sovereign you have spells at your disposal which cost gold and can assist your heroes. When they are in trouble that's when you use a spell or two to save them.

All in all, it's surprisingly addictive despite sounding a little boring at first. Highly recommended but try out a demo first as it may not be your kind of game.

Recently Majesty 2 came out and I'm surprised few reviewers mentioned the original. As far as I can tell, Majesty 2 contains the same hands off gameplay we've come to expect from Majesty with new graphics and some additional bounty types and a couple of gameplay tweaks to make controlling characters easier. Should you buy it? I believe that like the original, there will be a core group of gamers that will absolutely love the game while others will hate the hands off approach. I suspect like the first there will be a niche following but won't make a real impression on the general gaming public. I plan to definitely buy it once the price drops.

Dictator Wars by Gamelayers: Impressions

As mentioned earlier, I've tried out Dictator Wars by Gamelayers (former creators of Nethernet). So far, I've been somewhat underwhelmed. It's a clone of any other Facebook "Wars" game, a light strategy game with an emphasis on doing missions to improve your country. I don't really play those sorts of games but I do feel that it isn't as innovative as Nethernet was.

In a previous post I mentioned that Gamelayers teamed up with rather spammey advertisers in an attempt to monetise Nethernet. I'm sad to say that this sort of advertising is also incorporated into Dictator Wars and I believe it hurts Gamelayers' credibility.

If you're into light social strategy games than try it out but don't expect too much.

Steam Store - THQ Collector's Pack

Steam is offering their THQ Collector's Pack at $US74.99 which translates to probably around a bit more than NZ$160. And you get:

Dawn of War II
Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Titan Quest
Titan Quest - Immortal Throne
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Gold Edition
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Soulstorm
Full Spectrum Warrior and
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers

Definitely worth taking a look at as nearly all these games are critically acclaimed.

GOG.com gets more Ubisoft Games

Good old Games agreement with Ubisoft has been extended to even more titles so we'll be getting games like The Settlers 2: Gold Edition, Might and Magic 6: Limited Edition which includes all Might and Magic games up to number 6, Heroes of Might and Magic II and Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete edition . Not bad at all.

Relic Games Sale on Steam

Steam is having a sale on relic games and if you're into strategy games but still haven't bought Dawn of War or Company of Heroes you should definitely check it out. With the currency exchange rate though, you might find that some games are almost the same as in Mighty Ape with games such as Soul Storm.

I recommend getting

• Relic Super Pack for US$25 which includes the first Dawn of War up to the Dark Crusade expansion and Company of Heroes and the first expansion pack.
• Company of Heroes Gold (US15) which includes the Company of heroes and the first expansion
• Dawn of War II for US$30
  

Curiously, the Dawn of War Anthology which includes Dawn of War and the Dark Crusade expansion is exactly the same price (US$25) as the Relic Super Pack so don't even bother buying that!

Paradox interactive Sale

Strategy Gamers (and the odd adventure gamer) will love the sale ending 26th that Steam currently has on Paradox Interactive with 50% off all their games.

Recommended buys:
King's Bounty
Knights of Honour
Penumbra Collector's Edition (Adventure Horror)

And if you're into tough complex strategy games:
Europa Universalis III
Hearts of Iron III