Gratuitous Space Battles
As usual I’m late to the party (1 year late I believe) but I thought I’d blog about what has to be one of my favourite PC games of 2010, Gratuitous Space Battles.
Now before I get to the meat of this blog post I’d like to start with a little journey back in time (queue the harp sound effects). Cast your mind back to the year 1999, it was around this time I bought my very “own” PC, one of the first games that I bought was Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, that game truly defined the FPS genre for me, combining different tactics, weapons and most of all strategic planning.
Looking back at the game now it seems very dated, yet the underlying systems stand up as some of the best and most enjoyable I’ve encountered. Over the last year I’ve really been yearning for a game that delivered strategy components and don’t just allow you to win by outnumbering the enemy.
From Demo to Purchase
I was first alerted to the games existence when I was discussing games with a work colleague and he mentioned to me that he’d been playing a strategic space warfare game. At the next available opportunity I downloaded the demo from Steam and was hooked.
Generally if I enjoy a demo, I waste very little time before purchasing the full game. In the case of Gratuitous Space Battles I think the gap between playing the demo and purchasing the game was a matter of hours (that can be counted on one hand).
One of the major elements that drew me to this game was it fed my inner-gamer, you know the nerdy one that likes numbers and figures, the one that has been brought up on a diet of games like : Laser Squad, X-com, Syndicate, Rainbow Six, Shogun: Total War, to name a few.
Micro-management
I would be lying if I said that altering and amending deployments and ship configurations wasn’t a big appeal to me, combine that with the ability to try the same encounter in three different difficultly settings and I’m in my element. Although not directly a strategy game, in the common gaming sense, GSB pulls players into that mind-set: analyse the enemy (normally with a few trial and error attempts), determine the best race/ship/equipment choices, optimise the best deployment for the most gain.
There are a vast number of options available to player from ship design to shield generators, each has their one strengths and weaknesses that you will need to take into consideration. More unlocks are purchasable as your progress through each encounter and earn Honor Points.
There is also the Survival mode encounters that require you to build a fleet to last as long as possible. These encounters are also linked into a global scoreboard that act like a proverbial red-flag to players that enjoy a challenge.
Finally there is an online challenge system that sees to go head-to-head against real opponents. I’ve registered for this but haven’t had any battles yet as I’m still getting to grips with a lot of the races/ships/modules.
But wait! that’s not all!
The core game comes with the standard 5 races (4 un-lockable), these cover over 40 different ship designs, which is more than enough to get you started. You are also able to purchase additional races for the game there are currently 4 additional races that you can buy
One man development army Cliffski has been hard at work building a Campaign mode for the game, which I havn’t played yet as it’s not on Steam, but from the videos it looks rather good.
So if you want to grab yourself a copy why not pay a visit to http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html thus directly helping the developer, and without being locked into using a digital distributor like Steam. It’s worth noting the game has it’s own built in updater that ensures you have a most recent version.
Verdict
Playability 4 | Graphics 5 | Audio 4 | Longevity 3 | Originality 5
Total 21 out of 25
GSB doesn’t tie you up with complex stories its all about the gameplay, once you have grasped the basics you are left alone to battle against the enemy forces. That not to say it’s easy, each encounter can take a fair amount of prep-time as you work to get the best configuration.
The game features beautifully designed ship models that bring a wonderful dimension to GSB, upbeat music that instantly makes you think of space themed films and the ever present and continual sound of banks of lasers firing into the dark voids of space.
Blown away by Section 8
After a few exciting weeks playing open betas it’s finally time to un-install these Gigabyte hoggers and reclaim some of my hard disc.
First was Champions Online, which is now live and appears to doing a good job so far and I believe I glanced a Tweat about a first free expansion.
The second open beta client to be removed is that of the rather pretty Fallen Earth, I didn’t really get much chance to play about on this as my Graphics card was having issues. I hope to get chance to revisit this game when I have more time on my hands.
The third open beta I have been playing is a FPS game called Section 8, I heard about the game while listening to the Gamers with jobs podcast. I have to admit that I believed I wasn’t going to enjoy this game as it looks like another hopper populated FPS, that was being developed for the console market with a PC port thrown in for good measure.
Boy was I wrong. This open beta with only a fraction of the skills and maps was completely wonderful and didn’t become repetitive for each match. The match were long enough to be fun and allowed you to get into the swing of things, but not drawn-out where you end up praying for the match to finish. The customisable load-outs and suits gave a superior feeling to the standard FPS game we tend to get sucked into these days, combine that with the ability to “Drop” anywhere on the map makes this game ideal for the quick drop in gamer.
The game will also feature a single player campaign with the multi-player remaining the backbone of the product.
During post match chatter I read the following “Win or lose, you feel like you have achieved something in this game, and it’s fun”.
Section 8 is out for the PC and XBox360 on Friday 4th September (I believe), no doubt there will be demos around. So if you are looking for a game to perhaps tide you over until Modern Warfare 2 arrives in November, perhaps you should give Section 8 a whirl.
Battle for Middle Earth 2 / Assassins Creed
Back in the history of the welshtroll website my friends and I would review various media items like books, games, films and music. What with this being a new year I’m going to try and revive the tradition starting with my recent gaming adventures.
I’ve recently played a couple of non-mmo games, so I thought I’d quickly type up quick reviews about them.
The first game is Battle for Middle Earth 2 a Tolkien-based RTS, this standalone follow up in the series was enjoyable but sadly very short lived. The campaign mode gave me enough time to get to grips with the buildings/units and navigation, then much to my disappointment it was all over.
Quite gutted I played a few Skirmishes against the PC, checking out some of the locations from the film, with my battle at Helms deep lasting a good 45 minutes. Although without any kind of progression skirmish mode got old quite fast. I did like the create a Hero element but it seemed some-what out of place in a RTS game.
Conclusion : A well designed game with awesome attention to detail, although quite short lifespan in my opinion (5/10)
Second up on my list has been Assassins Creed. I’d seen quite a bit of the game over the last year so thought I knew what to expect. The controls were designed for the console so maximising the controls for a few keys gave me some concern to begin with, yet the controls still remained suited for the PC title.
A good spread of local-missions kept me on my toes at every turn, a wonderfully thought out storyline with some well scripted cut-scenes ( though I got slightly confused at the 2nd storyline that was running ).
Another feature I liked was the ability to quick travel to an area you had unlocked, this reduced the 15 minutes travel between zones I was expecting. Annoyingly my experience of this game was plagued by blue screen crashes that I have to attribute to this title.
Conclusion : A true gem of game perfection, that truely had me captivated from the start to finish. A good console transition. (9/10)
