Tuesday, January 27, 2015

OTTTD (PC)


After playing One More Line on the recommendation of one of my students, I checked out the authors of that game and listed on their webpage is also OTTTD - (Over The Top Tower Defense), another game that has been waiting patiently in my Steam library to be played. I thought the look of the game was great and picked it up a while ago but never got around to playing it (or the demo which I had installed with an icon on my desktop for ages).


I just love the look of this game and this little cut scene is another great example of it's cute design.


The gore in OTTTD is a quite....over-the-top; as promised. This does get in the way of the action and if you feel that it's in the way too much you can turn the gore down - or right off. Loved these first levels, fighting shell fish - crabs and even dolphins with guns strapped to their backs....haha, great!


Unfortunately you can't zoom in or out as much as I would like, and there isn't any way to speed up the gameplay - you can rush some waves but no way to "fast forward" as in some other TD games. This is frustrating because sometimes you have a good setup and just have to sit back and wait .... and wait.... also there elements of different currency that have been carried over from the tablet version, which makes it all feel a little unbalanced and clunky - and wishing I could just purchase the 'coin doubler' to rebalance the game....


Oops, I wasn't concentrating and Flux Damage died.... I don't know if his abilities die with him like in X-Com but I was able to resurrect him with a little cash (just like in real life!). It does add another element to it - taking care of your heroes.


You can upgrade your equipment for each of your 'heroes.' I'll admit, knowing that this game is also on tablets it made me wonder if this is where the IAP come in - the unlocks seemed pretty pricey too.


I unlocked my third hero, and noticed that you can reshuffle his name (maybe it uses the same naming matrix that they use on their webpage : SMG )


Other than that it's a pretty normal tower defense game, really over-the-top splattering gore, place towers at predestined places, upgrade them with the cash you earn by killing enemies that come in waves and use your heroes' abilities to support your towers and hold out. I might revisit this one just to see the other characters or upgrade their skills and equipment a little - but I don't think there's enough originality to dethrone any of my favourite tower defense games. Would be good on a tablet and theres nothing really wrong with it (just sometimes the angle of the level hid the 'life' bar of the towers) - a solid TD game with humour and cartoon gore!



Saturday, January 10, 2015

AltecApollyon : This Week's Gaming (Week 2 - 2015)

A new year; back to work and back to gaming! This week I've been trying to really concentrate on a select few games instead of the usual flipping between whatever tickles my fancy. Apart from the 'normal gaming' (ie. Agricola and Carcassonne on the iphone and testing a few apps here and there) I have keep the gaming to these : 



On the iPad : Shadowrun Returns - I tried this on the PC and then wasn't really hooked but thought that it would be a better fit on the iPad. It is but I have an iPad 2 and it sometimes suffers from lag and one in a while the app even closes on me. Luckily it saves often. The backgrounds are the main reason I am playing (similar quality to Transistor) I think they look amazing - the game itself is pretty straight-forward, RPG with turn-based action but the action isn't as engaging as X-Com or Transistor. I do like the detective idea and the world in general. I wonder how long I'll be able to put up with the lag on the iPad before I dump it....there are a lot of good RPGs out there - not counting all the ones I'd love to revisit.


On the PC : Metal Gear Solid : Ground Zeroes - A friend bought this for me. He said "some things just have to be played" - referring to the fact that I had never played a Metal Gear Solid game. I know about them sure, but I never had a Sony console and it wasn't until recently that the remastered HD versions appeared on the Xbox. I've played a lot of stealth games though and am a longtime fan of both the Splinter Cell series and Hitman - oh and Thief - I am interested to see what MGS still brings to the genre and how much it has changed (since it's been a while since I have actually played a 3rd person stealth game).



On the PC : Geometry Wars 3  : Dimensions - Once again though an arcade game takes up most of my gaming time. "Just one more try" is a sentence I hear myself saying more often with GW3. I love the aesthetic and the competitiveness of this thing. I just wish my highscores had been taken over from the Xbox into the Classic modes so I didn't have to prove my skill once again. This is a game that makes me dream of building a modern arcade cabinet.