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This has been superceded by the Dawn of War: The Complete Edition with the final expansion Soul Storm so you may as well just get that as a digital download which is now probably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

Syberia Collector's Edition Review

Pro's
Amazing Artwork
Good plot
Good characters
Fairly good voicework

Con's
Syberia 1 itself was fairly short and you really need Syberia II for the story to finish it properly
Some puzzles are way to hard
Puzzles are uninteresting
Doesn't take advantage of the unique mechanical theme to deliver true mechanical puzzles.
Pixel hunting problems particularly
Kate can't 'teleport' to different locations

My overall impression:
I was very impressed with the artwork, character and plot which were all tightly woven into the story. Unfortunately what let me down was the actual gameplay/puzzle part. Puzzles are either very simple or just perplexing. When combined with the fact that some hot spots blend in a bit too well with the background art it make them rather poor. Why didn't they create some really cool self-contained mechanical puzzles like The Incredible Machine? I'm really not sure.

Also you can't skip to locations and have to slowly wait for Kate to run or walk back to where you want to go.

About the 'Collector's Edition'
Surprisingly there aren't many reviews on what the Collector's edition is. Well, the collector's edition itself combines the adventures on a single DVD and includes a making of video. That's it. The case itself is made of paper as well. Overall it just feels more like 'Syberia Budget Edition' rather than something to be called the 'Collector's Edition'. It is priced as a budget title but I was hoping for something more. Maybe a compilation of artwork or something or even just additional wallpapers on the DVD?

Personally, you may as well buy Syberia 1 and Syberia from GOG.com because at the very least you can get some better extras like the soundtrack.

I do recommend that the adventure gamer buys it because it is still awesome story but the poor puzzles make me rate this entire adventure a 6.5/10.

Josh Whelchel's New Album

Josh Whelchel composer for The Spirit Engine soundtracks has just released a new album comprising of songs from 2001 to 2008. Check it out here.

Spirit Engine Review + Save Files

So just finished The Spirit Engine by Mark Pay. A freeware RPG game. If you love RPGs I highly recommend you get it. It's an amazing effort and I think still stands the test of time. By the way, I enjoyed it way more than playing Quake 4.

Download it from the official site here:
The Spirit Engine

Don't forget you can download the music for free at Josh Whelchel's site here:
Spirit Engine OST

The game has good writing, good story, good pacing, good grahpics and I only get stuck in a couple of places and had to level up a little. Which is good because I can't stand training for too long.

Anyway, here are a couple of gameplay and interface issues I noticed with the game which mar this otherwise great freeware classic. Most of these issues are fixed in the Sequel The Spirit Engine 2 so take this as a lesson in what not to do in an RPG.

1) Save points cost gold - Games like Resident Evil did the same thing with limited saves and was the game better for it? I don't think so. Furthermore, save points cost more money the further you travel into a world. The thing is the game has a sneak/run past function allowing you to cross completed areas without engaging in battle. So what I ended up doing was using that to travel back towards a free or cheaper save point to do so. It just means more pointless clicking for the gamer.

2) Skill chains are hard to change - You can save up to 3 skill chains and toggle between them mid-battle on the fly but the better option is to enter the skill menu causing the game to pause and then changing it. Entering the skill menu is much better because it gives you greater control over what you want the characters to do.

3) Skill chains are hard to track while in combat - Because the timing is different depending on the skill used you don't really know where on the skill chain your character is. i.e. is the character performing skill 1, skill 2 or skill 3? It's easy to tell if you've specified all of them to be different. E.g Life Drain, Chain Magic, Kinetic Shield. But if you're like me and have a chain such as Life drain, Life Drain, Kinetic shield and need to change it, it gets troublesome. Is my Wizard on the first Life Drain or the second?

4) Pointless underground graphics - One of the unique aspects of The Spirit Engine is the fact that the game takes place from a side-on perspective similar to platformers. I am very curious why Mark Pay bothered to create graphics showing the underground. i.e. tree roots and buried rocks. It certainly is interesting but honestly I would have preferred some sort of additional GUI interfaces to help address the above issues as covered above.

5) More descriptions required in the menu - When buying an item, a very creative text by the merchant gives you a rough idea about what the item's special properties are for. Unfortunately after buying it there is no indication of what it actually does except for an asterisk next to its name. You have to exit the current game and check out the included help file for a more detail description. Annoying as there seems to be plenty of empty space in the game and equipment menus that could have used for it so it's curious as to why this was done. Maybe something to with memory issues?

6) Skills were unlocked too soon - You obtain access to all the skills early on in the game there really isn't anything to look forward to. I was kind of hoping to see some super powerful attacks or something but unfortunately these never materialised which is a shame. I think maybe one special ultimate per character would have been cool. Not a big deal but would have been icing on the cake.

7) Larger inventory needed - There are a fair number talismans and pieces of equipment in the game. It would have been nice to be able to have a larger inventory to actually keep most of them!

7) Music instruments are a bit too artificial - First of the actual melodies are actually quite pleasant, I do feel Josh Whelchel does need make the music instruments less artificial and sharper. I can't really complain although because it's free free free!

This wasn't quite fixed in The Spirit Engine 2 unfortunately. I guess I was hoping for Playstation 1 type music but still getting music that's sort of more similar to Sega Megadrive and SNES music.

The Spirit Engine Troubleshooting
Crashing to desktop after battle
A very common bug in the game is where your game crashes to the desktop after battle. This usually happens about 30-45 minutes of playing without exiting the game. This bug is due to how the program engine interfaces with newer windows. The only way around this is quit the game completely and re-enter it. I usually do this after I reach a save point.

Screen too small in Windows XP
You have to right click and set to resolution to run at 640x480 resolution on the "The Spirit Engine.EXE" file.

The Spirit Engine Save Files
You can download my Spirit Engine save files here in case you would like to replay the last level, defeat the last boss and watch the ending again.

Spirit Engine Save Files

The characters I used were:

• Clara
• Edward
• Matthieu

Granstream Saga Review

As a fan of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma by Quintent, when I heard Granstram Saga was in fact by Quintent I resolved to sit down and play the game. I had played a little bit of the game and read the reviews calling it immensely entertaining and was excited about the game. Having played through all of Quintent's Gaia trilogy, each one better than the previous one, I was expecting something that would that would be rough around the edges (as reviews said) but would be deliver a philosophical experience with strong characterisation. I was really hoping it would making me ponder on the idea of the reincarnation and humanity's reason to live like Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma did.

Unfortunately, my expectations were not met by this game. Here are my reasons:
Boring story - The story is your typical "save the world" standard fare. The world was mostly destroyed and the remaining inhabitant live on floating islands which themselves are sinking. The imperial wizardy is trying to obtain the power which keeps them afloat while you are trying to use the same power to restore the islands. The characters are fairly typical with fairly predictable plot twists but overall the cast is fairly likeable if bland. It is literally at the last stage where all of suddenly it tries to do a 'Terranigma' style climax on you, which was great but there was no real hint of the ending and completely inappropriate at the end of the game where nobody would want to sit through the typical boring story to actually get there to witness it! There really isn't any hint of what happens in the ending to real string you along unlike Terranigma which had you resurrecting the world and guiding history through your choices.

Bland graphics - I won't fault it graphically too much. I certainly think it could have been better if they had stuck to 2D graphics like Terranigma and the 3D models are okay. What I do want to fault it on is its lack of imagination in the level designs and overall creativeness. It lacks the distinctive regions of Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma based of other cultures. There are certainly a number of unique areas but not enough of it. I suspect it might have been because it appeared early in the Playstation console's phase.

Combat - For an action RPG this is really what makes or breaks the game. And unfortunately, the combat is not up to standard. The game has you fight enemies one on one at a time. This is way too repetitive and combat takes way too long due to the weapons being underpowered, the enemies having way too much life and the the extremely slow special abilities. There is magic in the game but the only way to get mana is to defeat enemies and most enemies don't drop it. All in all very disappointing. I can't understand why they didn't implement the standard top down action that all of the other games in the Gaia trilogy have.

Overall
I really wanted to like this game but I just can't in good faith really recommend this game to anybody but really really die-hard Quintent fans. It's mediocrity in all areas especially the combat and with glimpses of brilliance make it all the more disappointing. Thumbs down.

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.