Tendo City - PC Game Reviews

Gal Pani X (Freeware, final ver.)

Mon, 12 Oct 2015 05:31:49 +0000

Title: Gal Pani X
Platform: PC (Windows 95 or better)
Developer: D5
Released: 2000 (original demo version); 2002 (final release)
Freeware PC game, not distributed in physical media

Introduction

Gal Pani X is a Japanese freeware PC doujin game from the early '00s. This great game is perhaps the most unique Qix-style game I have ever played. It's Qix, but crossed with a bullet-hell game, and with some key original additions I've never seen in any other game of this kind. However, it DOES have images of scantily-clad anime girls, so be warned. I won't post that stuff here, but it's in the game. If there are any naked images in the game I've never seen one, but there are plenty in their underwear and such. Unfortunately for anyone who doesn't want to see that kind of thing, though, there is no other game out there I know of that plays like Gal Pani X. I wish there was, this game may be amazing but the visual theme is definitely not going to be for everyone. There's no nudity in this game, but it definitely is quite NSFW due to the more suggestive images you can see if you play well.

The game is from the developer D5, a small doujin (indie) group who made only two games, this and Sispri Gauntlet, a super-hard Gauntlet-style game with Sister Princess characters in it. Gal Pani X is true freeware, while that one was sold, so the only free version is a two-level demo and the full game will prove very hard to find, I've never seen it myself. This review is about Gal Pani X, though, so on to the review. D5's website was here: http://d5-dot.net/ but it's offline now, sadly. Fortunately the game is still available for download online from other sites; remember, it's freeware, so that is entirely legal. I link one site below, because all the others I found are "abandonware" sites full of retail titles for free download.

This is a PC game from the early '00s, so it may have compatibility issues. The final game seems to be from 2002, though I also have an early demo version from 2000. The review below is for the final 2002 game. Note that this game is 4:3 and runs at 640x480; it didn't auto-resize sometimes, on my newer computer, but the game is designed for that screen size. Also the game has some issues running on newer computers -- on my current PC I can't get the game to recognize my joystick, though it can see it just fine on my old WinME PC, and the framerate seems to stutter sometimes as well. I don't know why. The game does play though, fortunately. If you are forced onto the keyboard as I am on my newer computer, Z is draw line, X is use bomb, and ESC opens the pause menu during play. Even on gamepad controls seem to just be digital, but work well enough.

Quote:
The title screen. The logo blatantly rips off To Heart.

Background

Qix is a classic arcade game from the early 1980s. The basic concept is that you control a small marker of some kind, and move around the edge of a screen with a vibrating line moving around the middle of the field. By holding the button, you can move into the field, and if you reach the edge again that line becomes the new border. However, if the line, called the Qix, or the Sparx moving around the edges of the field touch you, you die. The games' later sequel Volfied, aka Ultimate Qix, adds small enemies in the field and adds easier difficulties where there aren't enemies moving along the border you're moving on. In either game you win by bordering off a set percentage of the screen, somewhere between 65% and 80% or so depending on difficulty.

Qix proved to be popular, and at some point in the late '80s or early '90s, somebody thought of the idea of making an adult arcade game using the basic gameplay concept. It was a somewhat natural combination -- Qix is all about sectioning off a screen, so these games have you reveal a portrait of a naked or scantily-clad picture of a woman, either drawn in some games, or photos of real models in others. Many of these games have nudity in them, but some have only bikinis, underwear, and such. Perhaps the most popular series of this kind of game was Gals Panic. Gals Panic games were released for arcades, Saturn, and other platforms. There were many other similar arcade games, though, such as Miss World and such. I played this game before ever hearing about the Gals Panic series, or any of those other games, but that's what the name references. This game has anime art and no nudity, just bikinis and underwear. I'm glad it doesn't go any farther, it's more than creepy enough as it is. This is a homebrew game though, of course, not an actual part of that series.

Then, starting in the mid 1990s, bullet-hell shooters rose to some prominence in Japan. These games are shmups, shooters where you fly a spaceship or flying person and shoot at things flying at you -- but the hitbox, the number of pixels of your ship that actually kill you, shrank dramatically, sometimes to only one pixel. The most popular bullet-hell games are from the developer Cave, who made titles such as Dodonpachi, Mushihime-sama, and Death Smiles. In many of these games, the 'beauty' of the bullet patterns matters. Can you survive when the whole screen is full of patterns of bullets?

So, that is where we get to Gal Pani X. I first heard of this game because I watched, and really liked, the anime To Heart (the first To Heart series that is, not To Heart 2) back in the early '00s, and at some point looked for PC fangames about the series. This was by far the best such game I found, though there's also a very mediocre To Heart doujin shmup out there. Gal Pani X takes the basic look of a Gals Panic game, but innovates the gameplay to such a degree that I think the games' name is unfortunate; this game deserves its own name, not one inspired by what really is a very different series! Crossing Qix gameplay, freer movement (more on that soon!), and bullet-dodging makes for a unique and fantastic experience.

Quote:
Stage two. Bullet patterns get tricky quickly. These folding enemies aren't the hardest, but you do need to be careful while dodging them.

Basic Gameplay

Gal Pani X is a 2d game with fairly basic but nice-looking 2d graphics and a decently catchy MIDI soundtrack. It looks good, but certainly doesn't push PC hardware of the early '00s in any way. The game does play well though, and the controls are great and very responsive. In terms of gameplay, there are two key major differences between Qix as described above and Gal Pani X. Most importantly, unlike Qix, all Gals Panic games, Fortix, and all other Qix-style games I have ever played, in Gal Pani X you are NOT locked to the edge of the screen. Instead, you can freely move within the sectioned-off area of the screen! And second, all enemy fire can kill you at any time, unlike Qix where you could only die while trying to section off a part of the screen or if a Sparx hits you. In this game you have to watch out for, and dodge, bullets at all times; this is the bullet-hell element of the game. Oh, and you have a timer in each stage as well, so you need to get moving. These changes may sound simple, but together make for a fundamentally different game that plays incredibly differently from any other game in this subgenre. I really, really love the free movement within the revealed part of the screen; after playing this game it can be hard to go back to regular Qix games where you can only move around the edge! Gal Pani X is an addictive game that I played for over 30 hours, which is a reasonably large amount for what is a pretty short game to finish if you just want to beat it once. And there is a lot more to find in this game, too, if you have the skill.

In the game you control a little diamond-with-a-circle-around-it sprite. You start in the center of the screen, in the middle of that random rectangle I mentioned. This is sort of the reverse of Qix, where you start on the edge of the screen and have to fill in the center; here you start in the center and have to fill in the outside. In each stage in the game, you start out in the center of the screen in a randomly-sized rectangle. A boss enemy will be somewhere on the screen outside of the box, along with some smaller regular enemies. The boss enemies and regular enemies are very cutely drawn sprites and look great. If you hold down the button (X on the keyboard, or the first button if you can get a joystick working with the game), as in Qix, you will be able to leave the box and start drawing a line on the screen. If any enemy or enemy bullet touches your line before you reach the already-revealed area, you die and lose a life, but if you reach the revealed area again that area is revealed. Importantly, bosses will shrink as the amount of space they have to move around in shrinks, but regular enemies won't do that and are a set size. As in Gals Panic, there is an outline of a picture in the background on each stage. Most of these pictures are of To Heart girls, or other mostly-female characters from that games' developer. I'm not sure if it is original artwork or stuff copied from the games, but it's high-quality artwork for the time.

In addition to making lines, the game has a second button, which will use a bomb. When you use a bomb, all bullets on screen turn into point pickups. They are limited, however, so use them carefully. Also, if you surround a regular enemy, they will drop a powerup. What you get is random, but what you want the most are Speed powerups. Speed is crucial in this game! You MUST get speed powerups to stand a chance, and you drop them when you lose a life. Fortunately they aren't permanently lost, though, but instead go bouncing around the screen. They will vanish after a few seconds, though, and you're at the slowest speed, so getting them all back while avoiding dying again can be difficult and frustrating. It's best to not get hit in the first place. :p When you set off a bomb or surround a regular enemy, they generate a circle of point-star powerups; for bullets they turn into point stars, while for regular enemies they generate a circle of point stars which move outwards towards the edge of the screen after you kill them. Collect these for points and to build your Combo counter; more on that below.

Quote:
The first stage is fairly easy with practice, but I may have just died here. Note how the status box moved because of the player is in the upper left corner, where it usually goes.

The Screen and Onscreen Displays

Gal Pani X puts a lot of info into the status display on screen. First, the game displays your current life and bomb counts, of course. Your score is also on screen, and also your time remaining. The game also tells you your current Combo and max combo you've gotten during the current stage; combos build as you grind against edges of enemies or bullets, remember. One other meter is vital, the red and green bars which show how much of the screen, and of the hidden picture, you have revealed. Bright green boxes represent revealed parts of the portrait; dark green, unrevealed parts of the portrait up to the percent needed to clear the stage at a minimum percent-completed bar; and red, the parts of the portrait beyond that limit. Once you hit the red the stage ends, you win. To get 100% you must surround the entire red area at once.

If you hit ESC on the keyboard or a button on your gamepad (it's on button 3 or 4), a pause menu appears. Here you can quit to the menu, take a screenshot of the current screen if you have unlocked this option, and retry the stage if you are in Mission or Score Attack modes. You can also save replays of levels after beating the stage if you wish, a nice option.

While playing the game though, it can be hard to keep track of everything that's going on on screen at any one time. You will often have your little marker; perhaps a line, if you're off of the revealed area; a large, colorfully-drawn boss; five or more regular enemies; and a screen-full of bullets, lasers, and missiles, all at the same time! You'll just need to get used to the chaos with practice. The game will move the status box into the opposite corner if you are in the area it usually displays, though; that is helpful. But beyond that, memorization really is key. You will need to learn how each boss fights, which attacks it will use, and such. There are a wide variety of attacks, and each requires different strategies to dodge the bullets. Sometimes you have to carefully weave through waves of bullets, other times just get out of the way of a giant laser blast, and others keep moving as a homing missile tracks you, for instance. While bullets are on screen you should not leave the revealed area unless you are VERY sure that they won't touch your line, of course -- remember that if a bullet touches the line, you lose a life and your speed powerups go flying.

One important suggestion I have is to enable the option that shows all hitboxes. You can't do this at the start of the game, but instead unlock it, I think by beating the game and such, or maybe through play time. Once unlocked, it's great! This option significantly affects the graphics, as it draws bright solid red boxes over the middle of every sprite covering over the great sprite work, but the benefit is that now you will have no more guesswork, no more of those times where you say 'but I thought I was safe there'. I usually play with this option on; I'd rather know where the hitboxes are than see the nicer graphics. This may be an option you have to unlock, I should note, but once you do unlock it, I highly recommend playing with it on for at least a while. It's a HUGE help. All of the screenshots in this review have this on because that's how I play the game, even if it looks worse.

[quiote]
Here I am ready to make a line around the edge and get 100% on stage one![/quote]

Game Progression

With only six or so stages per game Gal Pani X is short, but the length works well in that classic arcade way, and the difficulty curve is well designed. Also, you can play more than twice that number of levels if you get 100%-portrait-revealed scores, as I will explain. The early stages are easy, but the last ones, particularly if you're going for 100% clears, get quite tough. There is also fantastic replay value here thanks to the games' branching level tree and numerous unlockables to get. You start from one start point, but after each stage you have two choices, so there are at least six different final stages, and then a whole bunch of bonus final stages to unlock if you're good enough.

There are three ways to beat each stage. First, as in Qix, you can surround the boss with a line. If you do this you win immediately. You can also win by revealing 80% of the portrait, helped by paying attention to that red and green meter mentioned earlier. However, Gals Panic games have a second way to win: by revealing 100% of that character image on the screen. In order to do this you will need to corner the boss in some corner of the screen that isn't part of the background portrait, because you can't reveal the area underneath the boss itself. This isn't hard at first, but gets difficult as you progress in the game and the portraits take up more and more of the screen. You'll have to try to corner it against a wall in the largest sliver of free space you can find, and then carefully slice off any bits of picture still in the area. Of course bosses often seem to love to stay right exactly on top of teh exact spot you need them to leave... argh. That's fine though, that is what makes the game a fun challenge. Then, in one go, make a line around the rest of the screen, and if you did it right and didn't miss anything you will reveal the whole rest of the picture at once and get a 100%-revealed note.

If you got 100% of the picture in a stage, instead of moving to the next stage you go to a second bonus EX level on that stage. EX stages are a bit harder than regular ones, with pictures that take up more of the screen and thus are harder to 100% complete. They also usually have skimpier pictures of the girls, for better or worse. If you can manage to stay alive, playing twice as many stages will allow you to get a much higher score than you would get otherwise... but of course, the challenge there will be staying alive. This game isn't too hard at first, but the last few stages on many routes get very challenging. I think I've beaten the game before without dying, but I don't know how many 100% stages I went through in that run. After beating all of the regular stages, there is usually one final special level before the credits. Or at least, if you did well there will be. I'm not sure how the game determines which one you get, but it's probably based on your score, whether you have continued, the route you took, and such. There are a lot of stages that you can only see as these final special levels, so a lot of replay is required to get everything in this game.

Quote:
Here I just used a bomb to wipe out a screen-full of bullets. The number on screen is, I think, something showing the multiplier I got for a combo which just ended. How combo bonus multipliers work I don't know, but wish I did.

Scoring

On that note, the scoring system is somewhat complex. You get points based on how fast you beat a stage, the completion percentage of both how much of the portrait you revealed and also how much of the whole screen you revealed (this second one cannot be 100% because the boss takes up space, but the higher the better), and such, but you also get points for Combos. The aforementioned combo meter builds as you graze against the edges of enemies or bullets or grab those point stars, and then resets to zero as soon as you stop doing so. There is also a bonus multiplier for longer combos, though I'm not sure exactly how it works; the instructions, such as they are, ARE all in Japanese, after all, and no English-language websites go into any detail about this game. The screenshot above shows that there are indeed multipliers, though. Of course, you can see your current and best combo on screen in the status area. Anyway, grazing enemies or bullets will get you points. You need to be close enough to touch the enemy sprite, but not close enough to actually be hit by it. Having the red hitboxes on makes this task easier.

Also, every time you kill an enemy or set off a bomb the size of the point stars gets larger and the number of points you get for each one increases. At the same time their speed increases as well though, so getting a lot of them at the higher speeds can be difficult if it's from the circles shot out by defeated enemies. It does make it easier to get lots of points from using a bomb, though... so long as you stay alive; if you die, the size resets to the minimum. As a result you need to stay alive to get a high score. In addition you have a few second at the end of each stage to try to grab a few of the point symbols the boss spits out, but you only can reach any if you're close to it. As a final note on scoring, again, there may be more to the combo system that I do not fully understand. I wish the game had English-language instructions, this is the one thing that I need help with. I know about the larger point totals if you stay alive and kill enemies, the increasing bonus points from edging bullets, and such, but I'm not sure I entirely get the point and combo system, though I'm not one who focuses on that kind of thing in shmups most of the time, so I don't mind this really, it's just a little bit confusing at times.

If you get game over and continue, it's important to note, your score is reset to zero and you CANNOT enter it in the high score table. You can only enter a score if you either choose to not continue, or beat the game and have a score high enough to be on the table. I wish that scores from when you continue could count for the high score table, but they don't. Ah well. My best recorded score is a bit over 22 billion, and I'm sure better players could do much better than that. Yes, you get a lot of points in this game.

Quote:
... This might be difficult...

Modes and Options

First, do remember that you don't hit a button to get to the main menu. Once the game starts up, you can hit a button to skip the D5 company logo screen, but once the game title screen appears, don't touch anything or you will start a game! Instead press down to select a different option, if you want to play something other than the main game.

The main gameplay mode here is selected with the top option, Game Start. This is the normal game, where you start from the beginning stage, with a background image of Akari from To Heart, and then go through the branching tree to whichever end you reach. You have infinite continues, but cannot save a game in progress to continue later. Any pictures you get 100% on are added to the Collection menu below. The game also keeps track of your best scores, play time, and more; see below.

Second is Mission mode. Here you have a specific goal to achieve. You must beat each mission in order to progress to the next one, and these missions are HARD! I did beat the first mission years ago, after many tries; you have to beat a challenging stage. The difficulty goes steeply up after that. It was only just before posting this that I finally managed to beat the second mission, which requires you get a combo score of 20,000, a very difficult task; I had to corner the enemy in a very small area and stay right next to it, hoping it wouldn't kill me too many times. After that mission 3 is easier, just survive 90 seconds against lots of bullets. Mission 4 is hard again though -- you have to corner the enemy in a very tiny little area marked on the screen, and get a 100% score as well. That'll take a lot of practice to get right! Overall Mission mode is cool and very difficult, but I do wish that you didn't have to beat each mission to see the next one -- a design which let you play them in any order, like the combo or move challenges in some modern fighting games, would have been great here. From watching the menu-screen demo I know that there are at least 24 missions, so there is a LOT more of this game that I haven't seen but badly want to! The rest of the missions, and the remaining secret stage backgrounds I haven't gotten yet, are the main things I haven't done yet with this game.

The third option is Score Attack mode. This mode will appear once you beat stages in Game Start mode. Here you can play any stage you have completed in the game, so this is a one-stage mode, for if you don't have time for a full game and don't want the challenge of a mission. The game has a separate high score table for each stage you've unlocked in Score Attack. Unfortunately, the names for all of the characters and stages here are in Japanese even when the game is set to English-language menus, so I don't know who the non-To Heart characters are.

Next is Ranking. Here you can view your high scores in each mode, both for the main game and for each stage in Score Attack. Some mode names are in English and others Japanese, and others a mix of both. Heh. The game saves the top 10 scores for each table.

Following this is the Replay menu. Here yo ucan watch replays if you have saved any during or after a stage.

Next is the Config menu. This menu has three panels, for Game Setting, Sound Setting, and Display Setting. Here you can change the base game difficulty, turn on or off the floating menu (so it moves away when you go over it, I like this), turn on or off a FPS counter, set the number of lives you get per game, and set audio volume settings and such, and more. One nice option is Inst Skip, which skips the intro screen telling you how to play, unnecessary once you're used to the game. Setting Inst Skip to On is a good idea, once you know how to play. There are two more options on the Display Settings screen that you will have to unlock, Hit Disp and Language. Hit Disp is the most important of these; I mentioned it earlier. This enables those solid red boxes over each sprite's hitbox. Definitely check it out once you unlock it, it's very useful info to know even if it covers over the sprites. And second is the Language setting, to switch between English and Japanese menus.

Finally, there is the Collection menu. This menu has five sub-menus, once you have unlocked them: Graphic, Music, Attack, EX Config, and Ending. Graphic allows you to view any of the background images in the game that you have 100% completed. Even though I have completed almost all of the regular stages in the game on all routes I'm only at 53%, so obviously I'm missing a lot of those special final bonus stages at the end of the game, or something like that. I presume a LOT of replay, on different routes and with good scores, will be required to get all of the images. Music is a music test, of any music you've heard. Attack records how many of the various boss attacks you have seen while playing the game. I'm in the 80-percent range for this one, so I've seen most boss attacks, but not all of them. You can't actually watch the attacks here, unfortunately, only look at small pictures of them. Ending lets you view any endings you've seen. I have gotten two, the Good and Bad Endings. They are quite similar, but have different music and show different stages on the side of course, as the credits scroll. I do wish the endings were more different, but maybe there's some secret one I don't know about? Who knows. As for EX Config, these unlock as you play. At the point I am at in the game, I've got five things in this screen. It's not interactive, it just shows what hidden options you have unlocked. First, and everyone has this, you will find your total play time (over 33 hours, for me). Next, there's the ability to take screenshots in the game from the pause menu. Then after that I unlocked the Hit Draw option, which makes that Hit Disp option appear. Next is Free Shot, which will save a screenshot to a file whenever you press F11, for even easier screenshotting. Nice! And last is Language, to change the display language between English and Japanese. I think English is the default, for whatever reason, in this Japanese game, but regardless you can change it if you want.

And last, you can quit the game with Exit.

Quote:
One of the last levels, as the enemy opens fire early in the stage. Dodging everything will be difficult. Also note how much of the screen is taken up with the portrait -- getting a 100% will be hard, you'll need to corner the boss in a small area.

Conclusion

Overall, Gal Pani X may be a visually risque game, with dozens of images of scantily-clad anime schoolgirls (though it has no nudity, at least), but the core gameplay beneath that iffy exterior is fantastic and extremely compelling. I would never still be playing this game once in a while, or be writing this review, if the actual game here wasn't good... but it is, it's really good! It really is true that whenever I play a Qix-style game, I think 'this is fun... but Gal Pani X is better'. Being able to move around inside of the filled area is such a fantastic feature that I don't understand why other games in this genre haven't copied it! And yet, as far as I know, this is the one and only Qix-style game ever to do this. It's crazy. The bullet-dodging mechanic this allows is also a great addition which makes the already tricky core gameplay even more challenging. Qix had a very good concept, and this game evolves on that idea in ways which make it better. I do admit that it helps that I like the To Heart anime, the game that makes up so many of the sprites and backgrounds in this game, but still, I am certain that I would love this game regardless of what the theme was. The core gameplay is exceptional.

For criticisms of the game, really I have only two -- I wish there was a game like this but without the anime-girls-in-underwear artwork, and I wish there were better English-language instructions particularly for the combo system. I could make some other minor complaints, such as that the amount of replay required to get everything is a bit more than I've ever wanted to deal with, but that's only an issue if you must collect everything you can in the game. I don't mind not having all of the unlockable images and such, myself. I like the game enough to play it for over 30 hours, but not to play it enough to get everything. But for issues that's really about it, though. I guess I could also complain about not knowing exactly what to do to get the numerous remaining stages, but I don't mind that honestly; just keep playing and do better and you WILL see different final stages, so I know what to do, I just didn't keep playing long enough to get everything. Anyway though, otherwise I love this game. The game has good sprite art, well-drawn backgrounds (whereever they came from), good, very responsive controls, huge amounts of replay value thanks to the unlockables and branching level tree, a high but approachable difficulty level, and, above all, great gameplay. Sure, I first played Gal Pani X because of To Heart, but I found one of the best freeware PC games around. I give Gal Pani X an A-, and it borders on a low A so it might deserve an A. It's right on the border between the two. It is a quite good game I definitely recommend. This is a unique game which puts a new spin on an arcade classic and improves it as a result. I'm still waiting for a Qix-style game better than this one. (For those who can't stand the visual themes, and I can certainly understand why someone would think that way, if you like this kind of game at all, at least try it for the gameplay! That is the focus of the game, and it'd be a shame to miss out on this game because of the graphics.)

Quote:
This bullet pattern is interesting -- a lot of things drop from above, and you've got to move left and right to stay away from them.

Links

http://d5-dot.net/ was the developers' website. It is now gone from the internet, and isn't archived on web.archive.org. Argh.

http://www.ricedigital.co.uk/doujin-clas...-gauntlet/ has a nice review of the developers' other game, Sispri Gauntlet, from someone who actually has the full version of the game.

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Freeware-...aniX.shtml - Here is one of the few sites with a download of the game which isn't a sketchy "abandonware" site full of downloads for licensed games. The download here works great, so download, unzip (this game doesn't install, it's just a folder; run GPX.exe to play), and play the game!

Most English-language websites which mention this game are abandonware sites; they're easy enough to find in a search, but I'd rather not link such things.

Oh, I do have a copy of that earlier 2000 demo version; I'm not sure how hard that is to find on the internet now that D5's site is dead, the sites I saw only seemed to have the final game.

Pendulous (Sharewave ver. 2.4)

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 06:30:09 +0000

Introduction

Pendulous is a turn-based strategy game for the PC released in 1992 and updated with new versions until 1995 that was developed by a pretty much unknown team called Kamyan Software. Kamyan Software only made a couple of games, but with how good this one is it’d have been nice to see more from them. The game apparently was originally released as High Command, but changed to Pendulous with the first patch, and that is the name I have always known it as. It was originally a Windows 3.1 game, but works on any modern 32-bit Windows OS as well. I don’t know about 64-bit compatibility, I haven’t tried it. The game is a simple game, with only one unit type, but it is also deep thanks to the supply system. Pendulous is a lot of fun to play, and it’s a game that I keep coming back to again and again to play a game of here and there. Sadly I only have the shareware version, but the final shareware version is quite full-featured, so that’s not so bad. I’d love to have the full version, but sadly I didn’t buy it back then and finding it now seems to be impossible. Too bad. The final shareware version does have nag screens asking you to pay for a game that you now can’t pay for even if you wanted to, but they don’t detract much from the game. I have played two different shareware versions of the game, one earlier and the other newer. I will mostly be talking about the newer one here because it has a lot more features — the first shareware verson doesn’t let you save user maps, among other things! It was so incredible when, in the early 2000s, I found that there was a newer shareware version that adds in that feature, it added years and years of life into the game. Pendulous really is a very good game, and I’ve wanted to review it for a while because it is quite obscure but deserves to be much better-known. Pendulous is great, play it!

Quote:

Early in the game in a Random map. I am playing as Green. Note that this is in the replay viewer so the whole map is visible; while playing the actual game, Random mode has fog of war fully on.

The Basics

First I will mention the modes, features, and graphical tiles that make up this game, and talk about the graphics and sound as well.

Modes and Features

Pendulous is a turn-based strategy game with some wargame elements, so your goal in each game is to defeat your enemies and conquer the map. The game has a few modes and lots of options within each one. You can play a normal game on a pre-created map, play a three player game on a random map with a neutral AI opponent holding much of the map, create your own map, or edit the AI settings and save a custom AI. Technically the random-map mode is just a normal map called Random, but it’s a very special normal map unlike the ones you make yourself, so it definitely deserves to be listed separately. There is no campaign, at least in the shareware, only single maps. That’s fine, this kind of game works great with each game self-contained.

Pendulous is a turn-based strategy game for two to four factions per game. There is no diplomacy in this game, only combat — you win by defeating all other factions by conquering all of their cities, or by having the most points when the turn limit is reached… and you get points by holding territory and cities. Cities are really the heart of the game, the supply system works from them. You also eliminate opponents by conquering all of their cities. Game length varies, but games rarely take too long; games over half an hour long are on the long side. How long a game takes will depend on the size of the map, the number of turns allowed, and how long it takes someone to win. Games can be short or moderate length, but Pendulous matches won’t go on for hours. You can save a game in progress, but games are short enough that I usually just play a full game in one sitting. The game has no online play support, but does support up to four player local alternating multiplayer, or one player against up to three computers, depending on how many factions the map supports. After selecting your map you choose whether a human or computer will control each faction, and then which AI each computer will run.

Overall, considering the modes available, the customization options in the editors are great, I really like them! The map and AI editors add a huge amount to the game. Between the built-in map, Random maps, and maps I make myself, I play the maps I made myself the most often, but random maps are a nice change from the usual. They can be easy or hard depending on layout and starting positions. I wish that I had the registered version so I could see what other maps the original creator made, but this shareware version is great as it is.

Quote:

This image is a cutout of the types of ground you can lay down in the map editor, to show all of them together. The top row selects the player, the bottom the four types of terrain.

Tiles and Units

Ground – Normal ground. Armies can be placed here. How difficult enemy-held normal ground is to capture will depend on how many allied and enemy units are touching that space. Pendulous does not have mountains or anything like that, so normal ground represents all earth that doesn’t have armies or cities on it.

Ground with an army on it – This is normal ground, but with a unit placed on it. It will be harder to capture than normal ground without units on it. It’s important to note that you can only place armies on normal ground, not on cities or water. Armies do not have multiple hit points, health bars, or the like — if they lose a battle (or go out of supply for too long) they will be destroyed. Only one army can ever be on one space at any one time, you cannot stack troops.

City – Cities are the most important things in this game. You win a game of Pendulous by capturing all enemy cities; this is the only win condition. You cannot place a unit on a city, so the best way to defend them is to surround them with troops. Once a faction has lost all their cities they are eliminated, so protect them! Supply also radiates out from cities, so watch out. I will explain the supply system below, but essentially you must always control a path from a city to your troops.

Water – Water is an obstacle, you cannot move onto it or take control of it. If water-crossings have been turned on, any player with a city touching the water (make sure to place these in your map if you want water crossings to work) can then attack any other space in the body of water that that city touches. Remember supply, though! An attack at a distant place must take a city on turn one or else it will fail.

And that’s it, those are the only types of terrain in Pendulous. They really are all that the game needs; the game has plenty of depth in its gameplay strategically, it does not need more complex map options.

Graphics

The game looks like it was originally World War II-themed, but there are six different tilesets available to change the visual look of the game. I prefer the basic Original style, which was the only graphical look available in the earlier shareware version of this game I first played. Original is the tileset seen in most of the screenshots in this review. The other types look kind of ugly or are a bit harder to see territory in. Most of the other themes have larger squares than Original, which means you can see less map in the same amount of space, and also don’t fully color in squares with the owner’s color but instead just have a border for the owner’s color with a standard color in the middle, which makes telling what your territory is a bit more difficult. Also, the “better” graphics in the alternate tilesets look even more dated than the basic one, really — this game is from the mid ’90s and looks it, and those alternate tilesets really make this stand out while Original has a more timelessly simple look. I recommend sticking with the classic tileset, and not using the ships, tanks, or other options. The game looks okay for a low-budget shareware game from its time, but it is definitely the gameplay that makes this game so fun to this day, not the dated and mediocre visuals.

Sound

The only sounds you will hear in this game are a generic ‘Attack’ sound when an army attacks another one, and a generic ‘placed unit’ sound when an army is put down on the map. That is it. There are different sounds for each graphical tileset, though, appropriate for the theme; that’s a nice touch. Any other audio you’ll have to provide yourself, but that’s fine, I usually just play without music, but it’s easy enough to turn some music on, or a Youtube video, or what have you, while playing Pendulous. I don’t mind the nearly-nonexistent audio, the game is fine as it is. Now, on to the details of how the game plays.

Quote:

\Mid-game during the game from the first image above. I have eliminated Grey and now are fighting Red on two fronts.

Gameplay

There are three main gameplay elements to explain: Supply, placing and moving armies, and combat. I will explain each now, with some gameplay strategy suggestions in each section as well. After that I will cover other important subjects, including the AI and strategies against it, how you win each game, and customization options the game has.

Supply

The supply system is the core of Pendulous. Supply radiates out of your cities to all spaces that you control, in any of the eight directions from each space. There is no limit to the amount of supply a single city will provide, or degradation over distance or anything like that, you just need all land and armies always connected to at least one city at all times. If enemies cut off some of your land and troops from all of your cities, or capture all of your cities in an area, after that turn ends the cut-off armies and ground turn dark. These troops and spaces now are helpless, and any enemy who attacks them will automatically win every time and take the space. In addition, after the affected player’s next turn, all units on dark spaces will be lost and the tiles will become blank spaces. You can lose whole large blocks of armies this way if things go badly, which can be very difficult or impossible to recover from if you are in a bad situation. I love the supply system in this game, it makes the game a lot more interesting than it would be if you just placed armies around and attacked territory.

Placing and Moving Armies

At the beginning of each turn, each player gets a number of resources and reinforcement armies, with the number of each you get depending on the game settings for armies and resources per turn and city. Every turn, each player gets to do two things: first place any new armies they have gotten, and then move current armies. Remember, there may only ever be one army on any one space, and you can’t put armies on cities, so they will spread out all over the map in a hurry during games of Pendulous. On the first turn of each game armies may only be placed on your own territory, but after that you can attack both with new and current armies. You have a limited number of moves each turn, in addition to the limited number of armies you get each turn, so you need to carefully consider what you want to do. You can end a turn whenever you want from the menu. Unused moves and troops carry over from one turn to the next, and as I said earlier the maximum amount of troops and armies you can have at any one time depends on the settings chosen by the map creator in the editor.

In addition to placing armies, you can also move armies that you previously placed on the map. If you click on an army of yours, instead of empty ground, you will pick up the army on that space. This will use up one move, though. This army then goes into your army queue, for use in attacks or placing on empty ground you control, so moving an army from one space to another uses up two moves, one to pick it up and the second to put it down. You often have more resources than armies, but in maps which give you more resources than armies, which is how the built-in maps and some of the maps I’ve made work, this is even more true so you really need to consider how to use your troops — having more resources than troops encourages offense to the point of stripping your defenses bare. But if you don’t attack, the enemy will… A delicate balance between the two is required.

Combat and Basic Strategy

Combat in Pendulous is simple as expected, but has depth to it. Yes, there is only one unit type, the basic army, and units die in one hit, but because only one army can be on any one space at a time, because you have limited units and moves in your queue each turn, and because of the support and attack-chance systems, you need to carefully consider each attack. Before attacking, a percentage displayed on the screen shows how likely victory is if you attack that space. Once you have clicked on an enemy-controlled space while you still have armies and moves left, an attack begins.Whether it succeeds or fails depends on a percentage chance, the Success rating seen in the right bar on the screenshots, but multiple factors affect that win-chance percent. First, if you have armies touching the space you are attacking, your chance of winning goes up. If the enemy has units touching that space, the chance goes down. Cities will similarly affect these values, though not as much as armies do I think. This means that lines of troops support eachother and make breaking through the line more difficult than it is for scattered groups of troops. However, as mentioned previously, you often need to use those defensive lines for attacks, so it’s important to carefully consider which troops to leave and which you can remove. The unit effectiveness rating for each side present will also raise or lower your chance of winning if the sides have been set at anything other than the default 100%, as well. And importantly, each time you attack a space your chance of winning the next time goes up by a couple of percentage points.

So, if you have a lot of armies to burn, you will eventually probably win even in low-percentage attacks, but that is pretty bad strategy. It is almost always better to first set up a better by getting multiple troops on tiles touching the enemy, so as to raise your chances of success. Chip away at their formation on any corners of their block of armies, instead of just attacking right into the middle of a line. Attacking over water is best done away from a city and with a good supply of armies and resources, because you won’t have any bonuses because of adjoining troops so winning that first tile can be tough. And the difficulties don’t end there with over-water attacks — you will need to take a city that turn, or else those troops will turn black after your turn ends because they are not in supply and the land will immediately be retaken by the enemy.

And that’s basically it as far as gameplay systems go. The game is simple and yet complex, as the best strategy board games are. It is a fascinating and great strategy game that few people played but many more should.

AI and AI Strategy

I have only ever played this game against the AI, not human opponents. There are three default AIs that come with the game, plus I’ve tried to modify some to make them a bit better. The AI is restricted to the same rules as the player, so if you turn on the fog of war options it WILL affect the AI too, it won’t cheat. That’s fantastic. In games with fog of war, each AI opponent can only see what their vision should allow, they do not share info or look at the whole map to win. I do love this, but it has one downside — when Fog of War is on, the AI can be pretty bad at finding cities. It just haven’t managed to find a setting aggressive enough to do the amount of scouting for cities that you need to do when the map starts covered. Outside of that, I have made the AI tougher and a bit better, but I’m not good enough at this kind of thing to really maximize AI difficulty, I don’t think. Maybe some issues cannot be fixed, but others probably could if someone better at getting the most out of those AI-editor options tried, so I’d love to see that.

Each of the three built-in AIs has its own characteristics — the Berzerk AI will attack deep into enemy territory without regard for protecting its own, Explorer will explore the map a lot, and Balance will do a better job of defense than Berzerk, balancing offense and defense. Berzerk might be the toughest of them, because there is no more dangerous situation in this game than when an enemy breaks through your lines, when you have a row of troops on your border but not armies surrounding your cities behind because of the usually-low maximum-armies-allowed limits, and start taking over city after city in what used to be safe territory. You can try this yourself as well, of course, though I generally prefer for a more cautious style that better protects my cities. Games of Pendulous can be over in a handful of turns, or if the map allows it they can take 50 or rarely even a hundred turns of back and forth attacks before finally either someone wins or you hit the turn limit. There’s nothing like the tense feeling when you’ve been backed into a corner and make a breakthrough, conquering a bunch of enemy cities while other factions fight eachother elsewhere, though, or when you slowly march up a map conquering all in your way!
Victory!

Quote:

I won! The whole map is mine. I even found that little island hiding in the corner through some tedious pixel-hunting (remember, fog of war hides such places).

Victory

Games of Pendulous only formally end once the turn limit is reached, they won’t end once one faction has conquered the whole map. Effectively, though, once I’ve conquered it all the game is over, so instead of hitting ‘end turn’ a hundred times if I won 100 turns i8nto a 200-turn game, I’ll just end the match there. I do wish that the game would end automatically after you conquer everything. The issue is, I’d rather have gaems end by conquest and not by running out of turns, but setting high turn counts means the games will probably never formally end. Ah well, though, this works. When a game does formally end, the winner is the one with the highest score. You get points based on the amount of territory you control, with more points for cities than just empty tiles. At the end of each turn a tally screen shows the current rankings, unless you disable it in the menu, so you know approximately how everyone is doing at the end of each turn.

Replays

Pendulous automatically keeps track of what has happened during each game, and after a game ends or you end it, you can watch a replay of the whole game. You can also save replays when you want. It’s quite fun to, at the end of a match, watch the game unfold through its replay. It’s a great feature to have. I’d recommend turning on the minimap while watching replays, it’s nice to watch it change colors as the game progresses.

Quote:
The AI editor. You’ve got a lot of settings to change!

Customization

Again, one thing I really like about Pendulous is the customization. In the map editor, you can significantly affect how the game will play for each faction on that map through the options. You can set the number of turns, whether Fog of War (black covering the map until it has been revealed) is on, whether you can see all troops on revealed parts of the map or only on spaces touching your own, how effective each sides’ armies are (that is, you can make a sides’ troops less likely to win battles), you can change the number of armies per city and per turn each different player gets (so one player can get more troops than another for the same amount of territory), whether you can attack across water or not, and more.

It’s fantastic that you can change all these settings, because messing with the number of turns, army strengths, number of armies and resources you get for each city and turn, and such have a huge impact on how each different map plays. I like making uneven maps where one faction has more territory but weaker armies, or one has more resources per turn but another gets more units per city, for example. Mixing things up makes things pretty interesting.

As for the AI editor, in that editor you get a whole bunch of slider bars to mess with, to try to make the AI easier or harder, adjust their aggressive versus defensive instincts, and more. I’ve tried to make a tougher AI since once you’ve gotten good at it the game is a bit easy, but I’d love to see someone better at this try, mine are harder than the defaults but not by enough.
Custom Map

Quote:
This is a custom map I made. Notice the uneven settings — different army effectiveness ratings, different number of resources, etc. It’s surely not balanced, but I don’t mind, that makes it interesting!

Conclusion

Overall, I like this game a lot. Pendulous is a simple game — there are only four different terrain types, three if you don’t count armies as terrain. All you do is just place armies, try to take territory, and aim for the victory, there is little variety there. The simplicity makes the game easy to learn, but the great design and the challenge keep me coming back year after year. I’ve played a lot of this game over the years, and made dozens of maps, and I’m sure I will continue to play it in the future. The supply system keeps the game interesting, as battles over cities often get heated; the percent system behind battles ensures that you use strategy when you attack if you want to win without losing lots of your armies that you also will need to protect your territory; and the limits on units and moves each turn force you to use strategic thinking. Playing Pendulous is a constant balance between offense and defense, between pushing forward and using your troops to attack and holding those troops back to protect your cities and territory. It’s a brilliant game, one of the better unheralded strategy games I have played, and I love it. This is one of the best options around for a desktop-based simple strategy game to play perhaps while you are also doing something else so you don’t want to launch some full-screen application. Pendulous is great fun, play it! I give the game an A-. I wish I had the full version, to get rid of the nag screens and to add more maps, but the 2.4 shareware version is quite nice and deserves that score.

Links

– My Pendulous Maps download is on my site's version of this review (see bottom) – Sorry for not directly linking the file, but for some reason I don't want to. If people think I should I could edit in a direct link. The file is a small 10KB Zip file collection of 16 old maps of mine, two AIs I made, and the three maps from the original developer that I got from the shareware versions, Random, Counter, and R_Front, for anyone missing those default maps/modes. To use, just unzip the files into the Pendulous directory, that’s it. The game doesn’t use subfolders. The map Counter doesn’t come with the version linked below, so you’ll need that one at least. It was only included with the first shareware version I played back in the ’90s. The shareware version downloadable from the links below only comes with R_Front and Random for maps, so do download this pack, and then make better maps of your own. I hope more people play this game and share some maps too, I’d love to play others’ creations.

http://web.archive.org/web/2006041008085...dulous.htm – This is a good webpage that reviews the game and gives some nice strategy suggestions. The original page is dead now, but thankfully web.archive.org made a record of it so the page can still be read. Note that the “full game” link there is the shareware version 2.4.

http://www.s2company.com/file_cache2.php?fcat=A** – This page has a short one-paragraph review of the game at the top, and links a download for the version 2.4 shareware version of the game as well.

http://www.mobygames.com/company/kamyan-software – Mobygames has a little bit more information about Kamyan Software. Note that the game is listed as “High Command” in their database. They have very little information about the game itself on the site -- just a tiny description and nothing else, no screenshots or anything.

And that's all I've ever found for websites about this game. It's mostly forgotten. Hopefully this review can at least begin to reverse that.

Or read this on my site with better formatting.

Recoil

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:25:08 +0000

Recoil
Developed by Zipper Interactive
Published by Westwood Studios (EA)
Released in 1999
Review written 1/12/2008

Recoil, by Zipper Interactive, which was an independent studio at the time but is now a wholly owned Sony subsidiary, is a PC vehicular action game where you control a very fast moving tank. The game's simple plot involves your character's conciousness being taken forward in time by a small group of rebels who are trying to defeat the evil computer system, the Network, which has taken over the world in their time. They have hacked in to the Battle Force Tank (BFT), the Network's latest and greatest weapon system, and given you control of it remotely. With the BFT you are tasked with saving the world from the Network. The story is told with live-action videos between each chapter. They are are quite strange and different, as there is a lot of corruption and snow in the picture, the picture keeps getting cut off, and the actors are sometimes hard to hear and seem disjointed. It makes things make little sense, but it does fit the theme of rebels trying to break through heavy jamming and fits the game's plot. The story is quite easily ignored, however, and really doesn't matter much. It serves as a decent enough excuse for the action and the videos are entertaining. In addition to the single player campaign, Recoil has LAN, modem, direct IP, and internet (via Westwood Chat) multiplayer options. It's too bad that there is no splitscreen because the multiplayer game is as great as the single player and it adds a lot to the short long single player campaign.

For their time, Recoil has quite good graphics. The game consistently impresses technically and everything looks great. As the game focuses on vehicles and environments and not people, the game's graphics have withstood the test of time quite well. Everything looks great, the environments are varied, and the weapon effects are particularly spectacular, with plenty of flashy explosions and lights. The game has a good and somewhat unique graphical style that is shown through both the ingame graphics themselves and the style of the menus and cutscenes. The game's sound and music is good too, though that is simply good, not truly exceptional. Even so, the soundtrack fits the game well and is well done. There is one technical issue to note, though. On newer computers the game has varied performance; on some machines it can be hard to get running properly, and it does have some bugs. This is probably part of why it died off online -- many people were simply not able to play it anymore. If it runs or can be gotten to run on your system, however, it is worth the effort.

The game's controls are simple, but may take a little while to get used to. The game controls like a third-person vehicular shooter with standard mouse and keyboard controls, but the difference here is that you control the BFT's movement (driving forward and backward and turning) with the keyboard while the camera, and thus the gunsight, is controlled with the mouse. The camera does autocenter behind the BFT, but if you move the mouse around you are fully able to turn turret of the tank (and thus the camera) around so you can drive in one direction and shoot in another. When combined with the great speed that the tanks drive at and the game's low gravity that sends you flying into the air with the slightest bump like something out of a SF Rush game, it is a somewhat unique experience. The controls work great and let you both move very quickly and precisely shoot your targets, and just driving around or shooting at things is exciting.

In addition to the original tank form, as you progress through the game you gain the ability to transform the BFT into three new forms, including a boat, a hovercraft, and a submarine. These transformations aren't as useful as they may sound, however, as most of the time you just use those other forms in the specific places they are needed -- the submarine for underwater tunnels, the boat for crossing water, the hovercraft for going over lava or water -- and use the tank the rest of the time.

More useful, however, are the weapons your tank is armed with. Indeed, in many ways the game's focal point is its variety of weapons. In Recoil there are 18 weapons, with a weaker and stronger weapon mapped to each of the number keys from 1 to 9. The weapons are quite varied and interesting, ranging from your basic slow white (twin) gun and stronger red gunshots to bombs, rockets, mines, missiles, homing missiles, and even a mini-nuke. You start out with only a few weapons, but quickly amass a large and impressive arsenal. Some of the weapons are pretty fun to use and get quite powerful. The enemies are armed with the same kinds of weapons you are, and most of the time when you destroy an enemy they will drop a powerup that will either heal your health or will give you a refill of some of whatever weapon type it is that they use.

While the missions are large, well designed, and take some time to get through, and have plenty of large areas, alternate paths, and a variety of types of enemy vehicles that will try to oppose you, there are, unfortunately, only six of them. Each one has a very different theme and setting, from a forested beach to a burning lava mountain to a broken city, a Venice-like city of canals, and finally a large futuristic indoor installation. Each mission is broken up into several objectives you must accomplish, and before the mission you are given a voiced briefing detailing the details of each objective and where it is on a map of the level. Once in game you are sent transmissions as you achieve each one telling you where to go next and what is going on in the story. Missions may have four to six objectives to accomplish, and sometimes you can do them out of order in some of the more open, less linear levels. Also extending things are the staticky live action cutscenes in between levels. Even so, completing the game will not take long. The game's short length is its main drawback.

One aspect of why the single player missions work so well is is the game's great level design, which in addition to the elements mentioned above includes many destructible elements such as trees, cranes, barrels, or pillars, hidden areas to find your way to, for instance by blasting part of a platform and creating a ramp you can then jump off to an upper level, and plenty of room to drive around. To make getting lost in the large levels harder, the game has an automap on the HUD which marks your current mission objective's location on it. As a result it is hard to get lost, though sometimes it may be somewhat unclear about what exactly you are supposed to do, as the game does throw simple puzzles at you sometimes to keep things interesting. Figuring out those puzzles is a fun part of the game and they are well done, though when you are stuck on something you might not think that of course. For instance, sometimes you may need to find a somewhat hidden switch to shoot or blast a beam while it is crossing between two electrified pillars Assisting you here is the fact that, when you can shoot something, your target sight changes color from red to green so you always know when you are facing something that may be affected by your weapons. This will, for instance, let you know which bridge parts can be destroyed and when shooting at the thing won't break it anymore. Recoil makes blowing things up easy!

When the game first came out, helping to make up for the sadly short campaign was a fantastic multiplayer mode. All of them require multiple computers and multiple copies of the game, however, so actually playing them in this day and age might be difficult. While Westwood Chat, the online service, actually is still operational thanks to a group of fans that took over the Westwood Chat servers for the purpose of maintaining Command & Conquer/Red Alert online play who never removed Recoil's room in the service, no one ever actually is playing in that room so the fact that it still exists is somewhat elementary. In the rare occasion that a multiplayer Recoil game does happen, however, it is a lot of fun. The game has a nice variety of maps, with six to eight maps available for multiplayer use. One is a racing mode map which isn't as good, but the rest of the maps are for standard deathmatch or teams. While they are based off of the tilesets of the single player levels, the multiplayer levels are new levels and not just direct copies of the single-player levels. They are all just as well designed as the single player levels. The city level was particularly great, with plenty of jumps and destructible elements and places to hide in both high and low. While people were still playing it online Recoil was a really good multiplayer game. I don't know what game would be quite like this today.

In conclusion, Recoil is a very good third-person vehicular action game with great single player and great multiplayer. Every element of the game, from graphics to weapons to vehicles to level design, is very well thought out and well designed. It was an impressive effort from Zipper Interactive and showed how well they could do the genre, an impression solidified by their next work, MechWarrior 3, which was perhaps the last great PC mech sim. It is truly too bad that Zipper got bought by Sony and has been turning out nothing but SOCOM games for years now; I would have loved to have seen a Recoil 2. It's unfortunate that it will probably never happen.

Gameplay - 9/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 8/10
Single Player - 9/10
Multi Player - 9/10
Other/Value - 10/10

Overall - 91% (not an average) While Recoil has aged, is short, and is sadly unplayable in multiplayer now, it is still a very good game.

Jagged Alliance 2

Tue, 24 May 2005 05:57:56 +0000

The small, third-world country of Arulco is being terrorized by a ruthless dictator named Diedranna. The former leader of Arulco, Enrico Chivaldori, thwarted an assassination attempt and escaped the country when Diedranna, his wife, framed him for his fathers murder. Ten years have passed, and Diedranna's rule has turned the country into a desolate, poverty-stricken nation. She takes money away from all public services and spends it on lavish possessions for herself and leves the populace destitute. Her army is substantial, crimes are determined at the whim of Diedranna, and the punishment is almost always death. Now, Enrico has enlisted you to hire and lead a squad of mercenaries through Arulco to dethrone Diedranna once and for all and bring peace and prosperity back to Arulco.

GAMEPLAY

JA2 mixes so many genres together that it defies description. In a way, it's part RPG, as each of your mercenaries have skills (such as marksmanship, medical, explosive, strength, experience, and wisdom) that can be improved upon and made more useful to the team. It's also real-time AND turn-based strategy, as you lead your mercenary team into battle against Diedranna's forces. When no enemies are in view, or in the sector at all, the game moves in real time, though when battling the enemy, the game shifts to turn-based. Then, the individual mercenaries skill points give them an number of "action points" to spend during their turn. A certain number to move, to shoot, to heal, to reload, how you spend each turn must be managed carefully to ensure all your men and women get out alive.

Hiring your mercenaries can go many different ways. You're given the opportunity to create your own custom mercenary, with their own skills and personality. Beyond that, you can visit the recruitment sites of The Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) or the More Economical Recruitment Center (M.E.R.C.). While A.I.M. offers the best talent in the business, they're pricey. On the other hand, M.E.R.C. offers cheaply priced but low skilled mercenaries. Furthermore, you'll find plenty of people in Arulco willing to join your cause, some for a daily price, some for free. All methods used together to create a balanced team is a recipe for victory.

The game has an excellent curve. As you start, you have a small team, so you face smaller groups of enemies in towns like Drassen and Chitzena, but as you move into larger towns like Balime and Grumm, the difficulty gets higher to accomodate your probably larger and more skilled team By the time you're busting down the Queens door in Meduna, your team is probably very strong and can even take down the feared Elite Forces.

Sound

JA2 does not skimp on the voice acting. Every mercenary and major character has a voice and several lines of dialogue, some of which can be very entertaining. While some voices obviously come from the same person, everyone you meet has their own distinct voice and personality, which makes it easy to relate to your mercenaries and try to see them through.

The sounds of war are here and they sound great. Guns fire off with differing sounds depending on the firearm, soldiers yell in pain when shot, bullets ricochet off of walls, explosions rock your speakers, and footsteps nearby can alert you to nearby enemies.

Graphics

Graphicallt the game does not disappoint, but it does not greatly impress either. All characters share the same general body types with swapped color shirts and pants, and aside from hair and skin color, all enemies look identical. Environments are detailed, but not stunning. All in all, average.

Replayability

Immense. It's impossible to get the full scope of the game on one play through. So many mercenaries you have yet to hire, lots of side quests, and lots of Arulco to explore. Plenty to keep you busy in Arulco, even after the game is over.

As PC games go, Jagged Alliance is probably the most critically acclaimed sleeper hit series ever. It's gotten numerous awards and lots of praise, but almost nobody I know has even heard of it, it's such a shame, because it's such a great game to experience. I rate Jagged Alliance 2 a 9.5, and highly, highly recommend you try to hunt down a copy. It's a relatively old game, so you should be able to find it on the cheap used or in a bargain bin.

Half-Life 2

Mon, 23 May 2005 04:39:08 +0000

Released in late 2004, Half-Life 2 is the direct sequel to one of the most well-known, and loved, first-person shooter of all time.

Graphics:
Depending on your computer, games can look very different, so accurately scoring graphics can be a bit tricky at times. However, from what I've been able to see on my computer [a mid-ranger] Half-Life 2 looks really good. Everything has a lot of detail, and all the objects in the game from dune buggies to glowy-eyed Civil Protectors there's a ton of polygons going everywhere. Add onto that some high-res textures and an art style that accurately captures the feel of a world that is crumbling and derelict.

Sound:
For the most part, Half-Life 2 doesn't have ANY music [something which I think is actually a good thing], though there are some parts that have a short burst of music which does sound pretty good. Most of the time you're listening to the ambient sounds of what's around you, sometimes its nothing, and sometimes it might be the ominous sound of gunfire in the distance of the dull sounds of footsteps right around the corner. Having an excessive amount of music would only drown all that out. The guns sound much like you would expect them too, though some sound a bit weak. HL2 has some pretty good voice-acting, which adds a sense of realism to the game.

Story:
Set just a few years after the incident at Black Mesa [as seen in Half-Life 1], nerdy scientist Gordon Freeman is brought back to Earth, but quite a few things have changed. For one thing, the former administrator of Black Mesa is now the leader of the world, though it seems the oppressive Combine are more in charge than him. Also, everything is in a quite a state of disrepair and the few remaining pockets of humanity are crammed into the cities and constantly monitered and occasionaly imprisioned. It's up to you, Anti-Citizen One, and you're trusty crowbar of alien-bashing justice to aid the resistance movement and make sure the Combine go back to their own world. The ever-creepy G-Man is never very far away.

Controls:
It's an FPS on the PC, you probably know how it controls just from that information, but since there are several vehicles in the game I talk about them. Both the dune buggie and the hovercraft are controlled by applying forward acceleration with the W button and steered with the A and D buttons. They take a bit to get used too, and are still somewhat hard to maneuver, but it just means you have to pay attention to what you're doing.

Gameplay:
There's rarely a dull moment in Half-Life 2 and even during the games few "cut-scenes" you still have full control of your character. An old scientists saying something boring? Well, run around the room and look at stuff while he's talking, no more sitting back and letting the scene play out. There are very few times when something isn't happening, so be ready to head again into the gunfire and head crab-infested streets, sewers, caves, and spooky villages of the future. There are about 12 different levels and each one feels unique, there's very little repitition at all in this game. There are even some levels that are very creapy, like Ravenholme [which is full of crab-head guys and other nasties] and the old cave. The developers obviously put a lot of effort into designing this game and there efforts paid off in a big way here, unlike other FPSs I could name.

Conclusion:
Half-Life 2 does just about everything right and very few things wrong and anythings that's wrong is only minor. It excels in every area and is a great gaming experience. About the only person who wouldn't like this game is one that absolutely HATES first-person shooters of all kinds, or just hates good games in general.

9.5/10

Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith

Sun, 22 May 2005 23:20:00 +0000

Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith (expansion pack to 1997's Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II)
1998, Lucasarts
Review written 1/31/2004 (Gamefaqs); posted and edited/added to on TC homepage late 2004; reposted in this reviews forum 5/22/2005.

Jedi Knight. A great and, at the time, innovative first person shooter. I am a huge Star Wars fan, so I loved the game. Mysteries of the Sith is the add-on for Jedi Knight, and is a very worthy follow up. Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith is my favorite FPS.

Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith are very similar, as is expected from an add-on. But in this case that is a good thing because Jedi Knight is an extremely well done game. It does not add much to Jedi Knight's formula, except for being able to use both the dark and light force at the same time, and adding more guns, but that is okay because Jedi Knight was already among the best in the genre in this category. Jedi Knight is unique. It's a slower paced game than Quake. The force powers make for a great twist and can make gameplay quite interesting. The weapons are also powerful, and the game adds some great new ones like a sniper scope for the stormtrooper rifle -- each weapon now has a second function --, but the focus of the game is on the force and the lightsaber, not the weapons. As it should be. One other way it shows its uniqueness best is by how its engine can display large areas competently and do it so often. Yes, by today's standards the graphics are badly out of date, but if you can look past that you will see a game doing the best it can with the graphical limitations of the engine it is in. And besides, I like the game's look. It is a nice representation of Star Wars and, as I said, does large outdoor areas very nicely, unlike most engines from when it came out. Quake is painfully bad at doing outdoor areas and even Quake III, whose engine is used in Jedi Knight 2 and 3, had problems here... none in this game. You are frequently in areas which stretch into the horizon. This sense of scale helps make the already brilliant level designs of JK/MoTS even better. To me, while they have many strengths, the best part about Jedi Knight is its brilliant level designs. Level design is key to gameplay, and Jedi Knight succeeded brilliantly. Mysteries of the Sith continues that tradition, with more levels in the same style of Jedi Knight. Some are even better than the best ones in Jedi Knight, amazingly, given how good some levels are in the original game.

The last three levels, especially, are very memorable. I would say that that group of three still has yet to be equalled in any FPS... they are just that good. The only gameplay problem I can think of would come in here, however. The first 11 levels are good, but do not prepare you for the challenge and uniqueness of the last three. When you reach them, you will be in for something of a shock as the difficulty suddenly jumps up several levels and you lose all your guns, for good. I truly loved this part of the game, however, so I think that perhaps they should have reduced the doing small quests part in the middle of the game and expanded the final segment. It would have been great if there had been more than three levels on the planet, given how unique they are. Large, quite long, very challenging levels are the hallmark of Jedi Knight and they are fully in evidence here. They also can frequently be confusing and make you search the levels for where to go next all the time, and with frequent (but admittedly mostly switch-based -- though not all. Some are inventive.) puzzles. but again, I like this aspect of the game. It is a refreshing change from your average FPS where it is nearly impossible to get lost. Of course the automap helps greatly here, and again Jedi Knight's great automap system comes in very handy. Without it the game would definitely be a lot harder, and having it is a major plus. I think all FPSes should have automaps and am sad to see now few of newer FPSes have them. The level design in these games stands out especially well when compared to Jedi Knight 2 or 3, who have better looks but simpler and less complex level designs that just do not compare at all to the original JK.

I only have one real complaint with the gameplay system of Mysteries of the Sith. The game changes the force powers system. Like in JK, after each mission you can choose force powers. But this time you can choose any, not just light or dark. And there isn't a branching mission path for being good or evil. This means that you can have both Force Heal and Force Grab... which just doesn't seem right to me. You shouldn't be able to casually mix good and evil powers in the extent you can in this game. It's not nearly as bad as the force power mixing in JK2, and I will admit that the Star Wars universe has provided for the possibility of people having powers from both sides, but it also says that generally any use of many Dark Side powers is bad and can't be just ignored. This game doesn't deal with that. I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but it did bother me. Because of this the gameplay gets a 9, not a 10. They should have dealt with this better. I do understand that because of which character you play as after Kyle that having dark side powers is probably to be expected, but they don't deal with the issue at all in the story or in the game. If they are going to allow you to have powers from both side like this they definitely should make a bigger deal of it -- it's just not okay for anyone to go around hitting people with Force Lightning and expecting no major affect on your light-side powers!

The story is the one admittedly weak element. They got rid of the FMV cutscenes, probably a good move, and replaced them with in-engine ones, but the story doesn't flow nearly as well. The game is broken up into groups of levels that are each stories but only have some things in common with eachother. It does feel like a group of mini-missions at times. It does have a story, though, and that story is better if you have read some of the Star Wars books, particularly Timothy Zahn's popular, and great, trilogy of books that the games draw greatly from. If you haven't read those books, however, a lot of things in the game just won't make as much sense. It explains things well enough ingame, but it makes it more interesting if you know the backstory. Still, each of the level groups really does have a seperate theme and story that only carries over on some issues. This is definitely the biggest flaw in the game, and don't get this if you want a great and deep plot. It is good enough, however, and I have read the books so I loved seeing things from them in a Star Wars game -- that does not happen very often. AAnd when you consider how great the gameplay is in the single player game, and how the level designs match Jedi Knight for brilliance, I can mostly overlook the somewhat flawed story. Single Player gets a 9. But subtract a point or two for the story if you haven't read the Zahn trilogy.

Graphically, as I said, the game is unmistakably old. Low polygon count, not that great texture detail, amazingly bad water... no one would play this game for its looks, and if you can't get over that you will not like the game. But I like it because it presents the Star Wars universe very well, and allows for that massive scale. I give it an 9, considering when the game was released. I'd like to give it a 10, but even for then the engine was not exactly the best looking one out there. Based on today's graphics of course it looks very bad, but judging old games by the graphical standards of now is not fair. And anyway, none of those better looking competitors could make levels as massive and lengthy as this one.

The game's sound is very good. All the sounds sound very similar to the movie sounds, which is great. And the music can be really good. Yes, it is mostly just remixes of the movie music, but it is presented very, very well. I especially like the music in the last level, perhaps because of how much time I spent confused in it before figuring out how to progress... Nothing to complain about here. Unless you hate Star Wars music. 10.0

The final major aspect of JK:MoTS is the multiplayer. It is essentially the same as the multiplayer in Jedi Knight, just with some more characters and levels to choose from. Still, given how good the multiplayer is in the main game, again, the best thing for them to do was not change things much. Also, some of the new levels are great, and the added force powers make things interesting since force is one of the most unique and fun aspects of the Jedi Knight series. The heavy multiplayer focus on force powers and the lightsaber, and not just running around with the biggest gun like in most multiplayer FPSes, is refreshing, and the level designs are quite good. 10.0.

In conclusion, Jedi Knights: Mysteries of the Sith is a brilliant expansion to one of the greatest first-person shooters of all time. Especially if you're a Star Wars fan, certainly, but it has enough good things about it that everyone should try the game. The graphics haven't stood up to time very well, and plenty of other games have done scripted events and puzzles, but Jedi Knight and its similar expansion have held up great.

And those last three levels... wow. Completely unique gameplay. Without spoiling anything, the final level of this game is one of the greatest FPS levels of all time, I would say, and is a true work of art. It is a hard and frustrating games at time and getting lost or stuck not knowing where to go is easy, but it is well worth it to get to the end. Also, if you buy Jedi Knight these days Mysteries of the Sith is included in the box, so they work as one long game. A true masterpiece, and it's too bad that Lucasarts didn't keep this team together to do a sequel. I'm sure they would have done a better job than Raven.

But if you aren't a hardcore gamer, keeping a FAQ handy might be a good idea for this game. It's well, well worth it, however, so don't give up. Fantastic game.

Gameplay - 10/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 10/10
Single Player - 9/10
Multiplayer - 10/10
Other/Value - 10/10

97% (calculated average of those six categories -- and a good score for the final product as well)

Netstorm: Islands at War

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 21:36:44 +0000

Netstorm:Islands At War

Game Information:
System: PC
Released in late 1997
Review written in Spring 2001; small changes made 2/26/03 for posting.
Review posted at Tendo City 2/26/2003. Edited and partially rewritten 2/26/2004 (for posting at Gamefaqs, and later the current TC homepage). Reposted here on 5/22/2005.
Developed by Titanic Entertainment
Published by Activision

Game Overview: Netstorm: Islands At War, developed by Titanic (Netstorm was its only game) and published by Activison, is a Real-Time Strategy game released in late 1997. Its main focus was on its quite good internet play mode. While the game failed to sell, it is actually quite a good game, despite some problems. Netstorm is unique in that it is a RTS game where the only units that can move are the resource gathers-- military and support units are stationary towers with specific functions and attack areas. This adds to the strategy because placement of the towers is a major part of the game. There is a wide variety of units. They are not balanced all that well, but all players can get all of the units eventually so it works well enough. These units are placed in the sky on floating islands. A (multiplayer) map will have a few large base islands around the edges, scattered resource geysers floating out in the air, and a field of small floating islands in the center. To get to geysers or islands or to build units (towers) of an island, you must build bridges. This is the game's most unique element. It is most similar to Tetris, actually, as the pieces are in many different shapes that you have to link together as you try to expand around the map. Skill at quickly and efficiently laying bridges is vital to being able to win, for if you are blocked off by bridges you will probably eventually lose. This is a problem for new players because quick bridge building takes time to learn. As such, new players lose most all the time to a good or even mediocre player. It takes time before you become good enough to compete with better players in the game, and this definitely would turn some people off of the game. Since geysers are all over the map, being cut off is devastating. And since geysers don't have too much gas in them, and randomly appear around the map, the more territory you have the more money you will make, given enough workers. The key to victory, though, isn't annihilating your enemy's units. It is sacrificing their High Priest. A Priest can be captured when damaged enough, and once captured, brought to a Altar where the victor's High Priest will sacrifice it. Once a person's priest is dead, they lose the game. It is a very unique game. This is probably its greatest strength and greatest curse, as the game is unique and there is nothing like it, but so different that many people will not like how different it is from every other RTS they have played. New players are also slowed down a lot by the structure of the multiplayer system, where at the start you only have a couple of basic units and actually have to unlock the better units in the game by winning matches and sacrificing enemy priests -- this means your enemies, if they are better, will not just be better but will have better units too. Clearly the game is designed so it is best to play against people of a similar skill level and rank, and played in that way it is fun. 9 of 10.

Single Player: Because Netstorm was clearly designed for its internet play, the single player mode leaves a lot to be desired. With no in-mission saving, a fairly long and tedious campaign, and more boring gameplay because there are only large islands and geysers in single player, the single player mode is clearly in the game just so they have one. It will take a while to get through, if you really want to, but probably isn't worth the effort. The poor story doesn't really make you want to progress, either. There are some better campaigns made by fans available for download, however, and if you want a good single player experience you should get them. They have things the main campaign doesn't like branching missions as well. 6/10.

Multi Player: This is where Netstorm is at its best. It was an early online RTS, coming out in demo form in fall 1997, and was probably ahead of its time. With free internet play built into the game, it is very easy to play online. Even here the game is unique -- instead of the average online interface, chatroom, and list of games, it has a ''sky'' where your island -- a small representation of the island you actually have in the game -- flies around, to where your mouse clicks, and joins a game when you click on a spot on a battle ring. That spot is the point (of the 8 start locations around the edge) where you actually start the game. Here, games from one to eight players are played on a map with large islands around the outside and a field of small ones in the middle with the geysers. Though there some problems online because of the fact that almost all players are either very good or no good, because of the small (though steady and probably slowly growing now that it is more available) number of people that play, it is still fun and even now, three years after this poorly selling game released, people are usually playing online. There was even a fanmade patch released late 2003. It broke single player mode, in some ways, but as I have said that does not matter. It added some great features to multiplay like different colored islands and bridges on the minimap for each player. The only real problems with online play are how many people cheat. Because of how the game was designed, cheating is fairly easy and lots of people cheat. Even with this latest patch, cheating is too easy. When past the cheating, though, the game is a lot of fun. But like many other things about this game its uniqueness is a weakness as well. I like the level progression where you unlock more characters as you win more games, but it does hurt new players chances of completing against good ones even more, or even against not so good ones who have more units. However, just getting a file with all the units isn't a good solution because you will then be thrown into playing against people who are far better than you, so following the rank tree is needed if you want to get good. It adds to replay value, though, because unlike most online games it actually gives you a tangible award for winning games (which is something I like about this). I like that. 10/10.

Graphics: Netstorm's graphics are clearly out of date, even though they get the job done. They are old, though, and may make some people not really try the game. This area is, because of the game's age and the fact that the graphics were just OK then, at best, one of the weakest areas of the game. It will even still slow down on a fast computer if you have a huge number of moving units on the screen -- a game limitation, clearly. That doesn't hurt the gameplay much though because again, only resource gatherers, not military units, move. If you can ignore the graphics, there is a good game behind them. 7/10.

Sound/Music: The music and sound in Netstorm is ok. While it won't stand out, it is decent and doesn't seem to repeat too often. Each resource gatherer will make some sound when you click on them, and they are good. The battle sounds are good as well. Overall, a little above average in this category. Nothing special really, but appropriate for the game. 8/10.

Other Info (& Value): While not immediately apparent, Netstorm does have a map editor for single player levels. However, to make a map you must both place the units and islands in the in-game editor you can get and create a text file to go with that map that tells the game everything from what units are enabled in the level for what players start with (it must be listed), and what the alliances and computer player scripts are. This is more complex than it sounds because this file is a text file and figuring out the syntax takes some time. For most people it probably isn't worth it and it would just be better to download some of the good campaigns that other users made. A few are good. The result is few maps made and fewer that are actually good. It is good that it has it, though. And with the infinitely replayable multiplayer as the main focus of the game, any single player is just gravy... 10/10.

Overall, it is a great and unique RTS, but has some definite flaws and limitations and a relatively high learning curve that probably keeps many new players from fully appreciating the game. Still, it is a good game and there is still nothing like it out there. Until there is, it will still be worth playing. One of my favorite RTSes, but I recognize that it is not for everyone.

Score: Raw Scores:
Gameplay- 9/10
Sound- 8/10
Graphics- 7/10
Single- 6/10
Multi- 10/10
Other 10/10
Total- 50/60 or 83%
Final Score (not the total-- this is what I feel the game deserves): 88% , because despite some problems and limitations it is still a good game.

Some links. Netstorm HQ is the main community site. Since Activision took down the Netstorm servers several years ago, they've been distributing the game as abandonware (and are working on patches -- one done, one coming sometime this year).

Links:
Screenshots from Activision's Netstorm Page

Activision's Netstorm Page

Netstorm HQ - The top fan community site and forums

Netstorm Main Forum - Old main Netstorm Forum. Still some use, but not much anymore.