PC PC GAMES

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Elemental is a great game. Elemental is a terrible game…This game manages to surprise me and infuritate me in equal measure. I can’t in good conscience advise buying this game (YET)

Stardock is a company with a good pedigree when it comes to their own games (Galactic Civilizations II + Expansions for me). When it comes to producing for others, it can be hit and miss (Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire). Sadly, Elemental is a miss in its current state. The game came out early, due to distributors breaking release date deals and pushing it out a day early, which prompted Stardock to allow the game available the day before official release via download. The game, when released early, was virutally unplayable (from what I’ve heard second hand, as I purchased it a few days later). The latest patch 1.06, fixes a great many of the initial problems with the game (i.e. crashing constantly, not being able to play tactical battles; the list goes on; click the link to see the patch notes. (http://forums.elementalgame.com/393126.).

The Campaign mode of the game is really nothing more than a lengthly tutorial to understand some of the many intricate and difficult aspects of the game (like many Stardock Games, the learning Curve is HIGH). Unfortunately, the tutorial seems incomplete and confusing, as you occasionally forget what you were supposed to have learned as you’re trying to complete the quests. It would be simpler if they just labeled the Campaign – TUTORIAL, or added tiered tutorials (like a lot of other games do).

The real game, where the fun can be had, is in the randomly generated maps, facing up to 9 opponents in a fight for world domination. You control your player character (called a Sovereign) and can level up spells, upgrade and equip items, explore, quest, etc) as well as controlling your fledgling empire. You start out creating a single town, upgrading the town (similar to the Civilization Series of games) and expanding from there. You can research various trees (Civilization, Warfare, Magic, Adventure, and Diplomacy) and depending on where you research unlock new units, spells, or treaty options (such as arranging marriages of your children to cement alliances). You basicly go around, gathering resources or quests and upgrading your Sovreign, troops, or towns to try to take over the world.

The Artstyle is “unique” and can either look very cool (think Borderlands) or very old depending on your outlook. One feature that is pretty neat is when you zoom out to a more global view, it turns into what looks like a hand drawn map.

In its current state, the game still suffers from some severe game play problems. Multiplayer, which is advertised as a feature in the game, is still absent, with an ETA of mid-end September. The AI is pretty terrible, and deserves to have the “I” taken off, as it seems to lack a lot of Intelligence; for example, if you kill an enemy Sovereign outside of their territory (or they kill you) then the empire is gone, done, dead regardless of the size or strength of that empire. Sadly, the enemy Sovereign will sometimes wander out of their territory with little to no army; thats game for them. In one instance, I was exploring VERY early in the game, and found an enemy. I declared war on them, killed them, and wiped out their empire, all without realising it. The UI itself is not very intuitive, and since the games manual is VERY small, very little is explained, so you’re left scratching your head most times. As well, there is a BIG problem with people who have Win 7 (64bit) with ATI Cards which suffer from some serious memory leaking problems.

The game does have some good aspects, like the ability to create your own custom units in-game. You can also create your own tiles, as well as some other VERY nifty tools and utilities for Modders. If you like 4X Games (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), than you will LOVE Elemental. However, I will only say this – You will LOVE Elemental even more if you wait about 3-6 months and let the game be patched up to what it was supposed to have been at release. THEN, and ONLY then, will you have a truly great and amazing game.

We are in trouble. Borderlands MMO gameplay, free to play (rumor) and different weapons and loot to collect…. this could be good. Let’s keep our eye on it!

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Markus (Markee Dragon) gave us a in-dept report of what it is like traveling around the world for cool interviews with game dev’s sake. While he sounded a tad tired, and who can fault him for that it was great to hear about GameCom in Germany and then even more about PAX in Seattle. I wanna go to PAX now…

• GamesCom Germany
• PAX West
• Terra (MMORPG)
• Firefall
• Tron Evolution
• Red Orchestra 2
• The EVE Party is the party you want to be at
• How big can PAX get?
• World of Tanks
• Duke Nukem is alive!!! (Pigs do fly)
• RUSE and why it won’t do well (no, it’s not the DRM)
• StarCraft 2 talk
• Company of Heroes Online now live for everybody
• RealTime World troubles continue
• Elemental saga continues
• A little XBOX love…. NOT

Thanks to a community member on pcpcgames.com I got “Plain Sight” as a gift (Thanks Kill_Screen) . So after playing through the first tutorial, the practice games and a little bit of online play here’s my review. First off, like I mentioned I got it for free so I can’t be too critical and I’d give it easily a 10/10. Now, for anyone who bought it while it was on sale, $2.00 I believe its still a 9.75/10(just because you don’t get at bonus feeling from knowing that you’re sharing) but if you got it through the four pack which was a total of $6.00 at $1.50 each thats a definite 10/10

The Game Basics:

• Plain Sight is (for those of you who don’t know) an Arcade type game with what are essentially suicidal robots hacking away at each other, then blowing themselves up
• You have a glowy ninja sword that is held at your side
• You left click to charge (hold to increase power)
• When you charge you swing your sword
• There is an auto lock-on feature. (Required to play so you can’t disable this)
• You grow stronger/bigger the more you kill
• However, that is temporary points. It goes away once you die.
• Permanent points are attained by self-destructing (ingenious way to balance a game, force you to die) The more people you kill in the explosion the more points

Thus: Kill to gain slight bonuses and bigger explosion. Explode to get permanent points and bigger bonuses. Explosion kills = points.

Review: 10/10

Plain Sight has simple gameplay that can be played by almost anyone, but it also has some more complex aspects of it. Mainly the locking on feature and the bonus powerups that a person can attain. Most people will stick to more damage, fast running, alert when targeted, etc. but there’s a shield in the game that is extremely powerful. It seems the game designers noticed because they put that as a tip. “Dying a lot? Why not buy a shield?” is what pops up about 50% of the time after you die. This shield is reminiscent of the bubble shields in Super Smash Brothers. Its a bubble around you, that decreases in power over time then recharges and activated by the right click.

With clean, solid colors (with shadows, etc) this arcade-type game will possibly last for quite a while as its graphics won’t really get old. The bright colors are picked quite nicely as it doesn’t hurt to stare at them. Then there’s the balanced gameplay (and unbalance-able depending on server settings for random fun). Its balanced by not allowing anyone to simply stash up on power like some other games (quake, etc) where the longer someone is alive, the more advantage they have. In this, you MUST die to gain points for winning.

Then, once you get bored of FFA and TDM there’s other custom game modes such as the classic CTF, Lighten Up!, and Ninja! Ninja! Ninja! Robozilla!

Another plus is that there are no repetitive comments every time you slash at someone. In MW2 they do a pretty good job of having lots of tracks, but its still repetitive and once you’ve played enough, quite annoying. Along the same lines there’s nice background music that doesn’t get in the way

You all know how I love Company of Heroes. So it is just fitting that we give a tribute to Brian Wood. Rest in Peace and our condolences to your wife and child! You will be missed!

Brian Wood, 33 years youth who holds on to an important position in Relic Entertainment and also has a major role in the development of the saga of Company of Heroes strategy and was currently working on the upcoming Company of Heroes Online.

Last Friday, when returning home by car with his wife, pregnant, suffered a terrible accident that cost him life, while his wife came out almost unscathed, except for some minor problem in the neck due to the intensity the coup.

According to the police report, the accident was caused by a young man named Jordy Weichter 21, who under the influence of drugs tried to remove his sweater while driving, while his companion, Samantha Bowling, holding the wheel lost the control of the car at high speed.

The result of the accident was the death of Brian Wood and the two occupants of the backseat of the car that caused the accident, 25 and 26 years respectively.

A few days after the accident, the deceased’s wife, Erin Wood, declined to talk about the last heroic act of her husband and by which both she and her child in her womb, were able to save their lives.

“In his final act, he did what he could do to save us,” said Mrs. Wood.

“All police officers have told me that if the car had given us full in front, we’d all be dead. At the last second, Brian braked very sharply to turn the car towards the right, so he took all violence of the impact, not me or the baby. This was the only thing that saved us both.”

Beyond this noble act, Mrs. Erin wanted to end with the following, “He was the most amazing and of good heart who never have known, loved his job, loved his family . I’m not quite sure how they are supposed I live the rest of my life without him. He truly was a gift, and not change anything about any of our moments together. The baby is due in November, so come quick, look to the future and know I’ll see a bit of what Brian was our baby and that’s what gives me strength at this time.”

we do our modest but sincere tribute to Brian Wood. Rest in peace.

We talked in our podcast about it and finally it seem there is real talk and owning up to mistakes made. I hate to see anyone lose their job and I hope the company will be stronger and healthy because of this!

(I’m up north on vacation typing on an extremely slow connection so bear with me)I don’t think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock’s fail on Elementa’s launch.

I’m going to write more about this but not only did we think v1.05 was ready for everyone but we felt v1.0 was too. That’s the level of disconnect/poor judgment on our part we’re talking about.

If the game had come out in February, it would still have been a disastrous launch because lack of time wasn’t the issue. It was blindness, sheer blindness. We felt the game was finished. And I speak of v1.0, not v1.05. Blindness.

There will be massive consequences for Stardock’s game studio. I’ll be talking more about this when I get back. But the game wasn’t released early. The game was released poorly. Head in the sand syndrome imo. I’ve read the reviews as much as possible given my hideous internet access up here and I agree with them. We just didn’t see what they were talking about. We thought any complaints would be about polish points or something.

The point is, the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is. I wish it was an issue of the game being released too early. That’s an easy thing for a company to “fix”. Elemental’s launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.

EVERY competent software developer knows that the programmer must never be the one deciding whether the program is done. Yet, my love of Elemental broke my self discipline and I began coding on the game itself in vast amounts and lost any sense of objectivity on where the game’s state was. I normally only program the AI on our games so I can keep a level of distance from the game itself to determine whether it’s “Ready”. On Elemental, I was in love with the world and the game and lost my impartiality.

We’ll do better.

12.49$ buys you one of the best and still good looking RTS out there. Silly not to buy it if you don’t have it yet, even with the Online version coming soon.

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As you will listen to this weeks podcast you will also notice that it went quite a bit over two hours. Lots of fun talking about games and diving deep into hardware and hardware purchase experience. Wonder if you should buy the Best Buy warranty… (or any other extra warranty offered at different stores), we give you a good idea!
Last but not least Curlen will get you all hyped up for what AMD and Intel have coming up with the next generation!

• StarCraft2 Replays… not just for the pros!
• Our first meet and game with the Steamgroup
• Simon needs a gaming Laptop
• Steam News (no Linux, AI director and a Movie?!)
• Cryptic to MMO, or not to MMO
• Elemental War of Magic (Fail Launch)
• Elemental War of Magic (Fail CEO and why you should not blame DRM for a sucky game)
• APB… how long can it last?
• A little touch of Bioware
• Mass Effect DLC
• BlizzCon Stream
• Big dive into the mailbag
• Hardware talk (The wisdom of the Wizzle)

Looks like Direct2Drive is doing their end of Summer Super Sales again. Last year, they put up an amazing series of buys, and they’re continuing the tradition again. From Sept 1st to 30th, they’ll be putting up 2 games a day for big sales. Take the time to look at what they’re offering.

www.direct2drive.com