Rome Total War: Alexander will probably be one of the shortest reviews I’ve written on this fine repository for inane gaming takes. Solely because there really isn’t much here to discuss. If you’ve played Rome Total War, then this is basically the same game but considerably slimmed down. The first and most obvious reason for this is because we don’t have Rome, or indeed most of Europe in this version. Instead we have the Macedonians who mainly use Greek units. The Persians who use Eastern units and then a handful of weak barbarian civilizations. They use Barbarian units (as expected), but mostly only last for a few turns until they get destroyed. That’s about it, as far as the faction roster goes. You can play as the Indians, but they’re not in the campaign so… they’re only available for the multiplayer mode. As for the units themselves, while the faction roster is limited this expansion does feature around 25 new units. Mostly for the Macedonians. While some of them are fairly commonly used, a lot of them are still quite similar to existing units. Which meant that in my experience I was mainly Phalanx-maxing. To be fair to the game, the new units are nice. Even if most of them are very similar to existing units, you can already use as Greece. There are a few new cavalry units for example, but they function just like cavalry normally does. As for the rest of the rest of the new content, well… There is a new campaign, six new historical missions and that’s it. If you wanted to play as anyone other than the Greeks, then that’s not an option. At least outside of skirmishes and the multiplayer mode.

Which begs the obvious question “how’s the campaign then?”. Well it’s honestly pretty good if a little short. This is partly due the 100 turn limit, although I found I only needed two-thirds of that time to finish it. Basically you need to conquer a set list of provinces, while being at war with literally everyone else. The enemies are all allied with each other, but it will generally descend into you grinding down the Persians until they collapse. This is due to the rest of the factions being weaker barbarians. Who only have a province or two while the Persians control most of the map. As for the rest of the game, the battle AI is a bit better than in the base game so that’s nice. Although I do think it would’ve been interesting to get to play as… well anyone else. As it stands you’ll play through the campaign once, and that’s kind of it as far as the expansion goes. I mean sure there are those 6 historical battles. Plus the skirmish/multiplayer modes, but for me Rome Total War: Alexander feels a bit short. It took me around 10 hours to finish the Greek campaign, and then only a few more to get through the historical battles so it’s a short but sweet experience. The campaign itself doesn’t really have any particular twists, instead playing as a standard game albeit in a new map.

And honestly that’s about it! I’m really struggling to think of anything else that’s really worth mentioning. As I’ve said, there are some extra historical battles which is always nice and there is a new campaign that’s admittedly fairly short. There are some new units but they don’t feel that new. The sieges are the same. The AI has been improved slightly. Uhhh the game is still great like the base game and uhhh…. that’s about it. I guess I could gripe about the game being unstable on Windows 11. Or how the Steam Screenshot function barely works any more, but honestly who cares. This is a game that’s close to twenty years old at the time of writing, and it holds up well.

In conclusion then, Rome Total War: Alexander is an enjoyable if short piece of extra content. If you loved playing as the Greeks, you’ll love this expansion. Ultimately I’d recommend it to anyone who has played the base game. Although it won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already like Rome: Total War.

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Quick note: This game runs like ass on Windows 11, not only will you need to manually tweak the launch options to enable wide-screen resolutions, but it also crashes a lot if you Alt-tab. Multi-monitor setups are going to have a rough time of it, so I’d suggest saving often and disabling any extra screens if you want to play online.

Command & Conquer: Generals is the off-shoot of the venerable C&C series after Westwood was left for dead by EA and consequentially a scattered band of survivors were merged with another studio to make a new entry in the series. As such the gameplay is both familiar and yet new, with the same base-building mechanics but a larger focus on abilities. Of course Red Alert 2 had unit abilities, at least for some units but generally these weren’t a big deal. In Generals by contrast, almost every unit gets a couple of abilities or bespoke upgrades that can have a big impact on how they’re used. Whether it be GLA rebels gaining the ability to turn invisible by standing still, or US rangers having the ability to clear out occupied buildings with ease via the flash-bang ability. Then there are the purchasable drones for US armoured units, the ability for GLA units to acquire supplies from defeated enemies (or upgrades for certain units) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Alongside these unit abilities are a bunch of new call-in abilities, unlocked via the introduction of quasi-skill trees. The way it works is simple, each faction has a range of specific unlocks such as gaining access to certain units or commander powers. These can include calling in an artillery strike, spawning friendly units, defensive AoE healing powers or having new units of a certain type spawn in at veterancy rank 1. You won’t be unlock all of them, and they don’t carry over between games. The system is fairly intuitive, you get XP for defeating enemy units and after enough carnage has been caused you’ll level up. Once you’ve levelled, up you can choose from a variety of powers that are structured in a tier-list. This encourages you to purchase these unlocks as soon as they’re available, but you can just save them up for the “stronger” abilities. From my own personal experience, trying to get all of the free damage call-ins like bombing runs and so on is generally the best way to do it. Because you get infinitely respawning free damage, and while there is a cool-down it generally pays off. Especially for the later abilities like the fuel bomb and the EMP blast, which can either wreck an enemy base or army respectively. Outside of these changes, the game is pretty much classic C&C. You’ve got a handful of unit types, they all basically hard counter various other unit types and the tone is pretty silly. Arguably the tone in C&C Generals is a bit more po-faced, but honestly everyone is at best a stereotype in this game. One last thing to mention, is that resources are clustered in specific spots, and don’t respawn over time.

As mentioned, while there are tweaks and changes Command & Conquer: Generals is still fundamentally a classic C&C style RTS at it’s core. Sure the call-ins are a tad overpowered and resources run out scarily quickly, but everything else is par for the course. You’ve got 3 asymmetrical factions, some basic base building that never gets too intensive, a campaign for each faction that’s both fun and yet slightly short alongside a ton of skirmish maps. I guess you could argue that having base building units that can build anywhere, instead of MCVs that can deploy anywhere is a big change. Personally I don’t consider it particularly different, as all it does is make it easier to setup resource gathering stations around the map. As for the combat, while there are a lot more unit abilities going around each unit type is pretty familiar. You’ve got standard infantry that can get run over, anti-tank infantry that shred tanks, tanks which are a bit hopeless against infantry, air units that are great against everything that can’t shoot back and then some artillery units. There are a couple of unique cases like the fully upgraded Chinese overlord tank (OP against basically everything) and the GLA terrorists and bomb trucks which can disguise themselves but really there isn’t anything radically new here. Instead the charm of Command and Conquer: Generals is that everything is just done pretty well. The three factions: The United States of America, China and the Global Liberation Army (GLA) are all fun to play and do feel quite different. The USA has strong tanks and the best air-force but can be a resource-sink and requires decent micro, while a lot of Chinese units get bonuses by being mobbed together and thrown into the fray. Then you’ve got the GLA who are fairly unique and get a bunch of mechanics like stealth infantry and bombs, tunnel networks, claiming supplies from fallen foes and the like but who don’t get any air units and have relatively weak tanks.

Fortunately each faction is fairly simple to understand and use effectively, with the campaigns basically serving as a series of tutorials. There are one or two missions in each which give you the full arsenal and the chance to use it, but most missions are focused on a handful of available units and you’re just trying to make the best use of them. Each of these campaigns follows the same broad structure and while you do occasionally get to see missions from different perspectives, they’re too short to have much of an impact. For context clearing through all 3 campaigns took me around 7 hours, factoring in half a dozen crashes to the desktop (in a game with no autosaving). The campaigns are fun, but more experienced players are encouraged to try them on Hard or even Brutal as otherwise they are very short and not particularly challenging. Then once those campaigns have been cleared up, there isn’t much left to do but play through the skirmish mode. The map variety is decent and there are just over 20 maps to play, but as mentioned earlier the amount of resources on each map depletes surprisingly quickly and the AI can often be relied upon to squander the funding available to it. Each faction can construct building which let it gain more income over time, or in the case of the Chinese a unit that can gain income over time. Trust me when I say that you’ll either want to do this, or rush the enemy ASAP. You don’t have much time at the apex of the tech tree before resources become a distant memory.

Speaking of the AI, it’s not great in many situations and will reliably trickle through forces in multiple attack waves instead of trying to aim for a killing blow. It’s not the end of the world, but this is a game where the real challenge is in the multiplayer mode. Fortunately there has been an active modding community which has produced swathes of maps and conversions, although at that point you may as well just grab the expansion pack. The good news is that all stores still selling a digital copy of the game now bundle in Zero Hour, although you do also get basically every other C&C game included as well (even C&C4). As for other criticisms of the game, I do have a few. Again the campaigns are really short which is a shame as they only really let you get a feel for each faction towards of the tail-end of their missions. Furthermore I’ll also re-iterate that this game loves to crash to modern operating systems, a problem that the unofficial community version didn’t have. Thanks EA! In terms of problems I haven’t mentioned yet, there are a couple of smaller ones. Unit pathfinding straight up sucks and controlling large blobs of units can be a pain, which is a problem because playing as China explicitly encourages this. The early 3D graphics can be off-putting to some, but I’ve personally never had a big issue with them because that was the style at the time. Finally there are some weird aspects of the UI, that were fixed up in Zero Hour and later games in the series but weren’t quite resolved in the base game. Super weapons need to be activated from their building and don’t appear on the side bar and neither do other building call-ins. Of course the AI doesn’t have an issue with this, but for human players it can be a bit counter-intuitive to actually use the full breadth of abilities that are available to them.

Yet in spite of these niggles, I have no problem recommending Command & Conquer: Generals to pretty much anyone. It has a great soundtrack, good voice-acting, multiple factions that feel different, fun campaigns (even if they’re short), solid combat and plenty of skirmish maps. The expansion pack definitely brings everything to the next level, but the base game is still enjoyable. Even if the new hero units do feel a bit useless compared to the sheer base destroying insanity of Tanya (for example). As such I’ll end my short review by saying Command & Conquer: Generals is a fun game and if you haven’t played it, then you should consider grabbing it on Steam or Origin.

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Half Life 2 is one of those games that will forever life in fame, or perhaps infamy depending on your opinion of our forced march into a digital-only future. Despite being an incredibly HYPED game and one that generally remained popular for years after it’s release, these days it’s mainly known about because it’s never ever getting a sequel. Which is a bit of a shame, because Half Life 2 is a decent game and while it’s various revolutionary features are now par for the course, that doesn’t mean it’s bad or unable to compete with those games that came after it. The facial animations are still pretty good, especially for the era and it’s gravity and physics shenanigans are still capable of producing enjoyable moments. It’s a shame that the game has so many see-saw “puzzles”, but at least it gets the memo that we’ve done it already by about the halfway point. Plus to be fair, at the time all this physics was genuinely pretty cool and for better or worse, the combat wasn’t quite so hot at time of release either. All of this makes reviewing Half Life 2 a bit of a pain, because you can view it in a few different ways that all equally valid. You could see the game as a linear 6th gen FPS experience in which case it’s fine. You could look at it through the eyes of it’s time in which case it has really cool features. Or you could view it as the harbinger of the current Steam quasi-monopoly which has not only dominated the PC gaming space but has influenced the console space to the point that Microsoft/Xbox are abandoning physical games. After getting in trouble for trying to abandon 2nd hand games all the way back in 2013. Vindication for Don Mattrick at last?

Regardless of Half Life 2’s wider ramifications, I’m just going focus on my experience playing the game. Which was years after release and my first time playing the game would have been in 2009, after my TF2 clan-mates (throwback) were SHOCKED that I hadn’t played it. Due to the fact that Half Life 2 was one of THE big PC releases of the time and was still a big deal all the way through to the release of the Orange Box. To be honest, I never bought The Orange Box because I didn’t care about Half Life 2 at all and instead ended up buying a physical copy of TF2 for fairly cheap (think it was 15 pounds?) and then getting Portal a year later for Christmas because it seemed cool. As such I got gifted a spare key for the game from someone’s copy of the Orange Box, played it for a couple hours and was baffled as to why everyone cared so much about the game. This was due to two reasons, firstly the opening of Half Life 2 could be charitably described as slowww and also the game really was seen as one of the greatest FPS games EVAR at the time. As such I just thought people were silly and moved on, kept playing TF2, enjoyed L4D1 and L4D2 (after whining about the $60 price tag of the latter). Only now after combing through my backlog and deciding it to give it another chance have I actually enjoyed the game. AFTER making it through the first third, which was also really slow and only gives you the crap weapons.

Which is one of the bigger issues with the game, because if you strip away the narrative and the physics then you’re left with a FPS game that has… uh… not great combat. Especially when the early levels only have a handful of different enemy types, with a handful of weapons you can use to deal with them. That’s not to say that the game has bad combat because it actually gets pretty good later on and there’s an interesting section towards the end where the game really leans into it’s physics based combat. Just that your crowbar, pistol and SMG all suck. Honestly take it from me as someone has finished literally hundreds of FPS games, the basic HL2 weapons are really bad to use. Adding insult to injury, the game has a low maximum ammo pool for most weapons, so you’re only able to get through around 5 magazines of SMG ammo from the absolute maximum. Which is a problem when it’s not very accurate and doesn’t do that much damage, much like the pistol. Fortunately the game picks up especially around Ravenholm when you get the Shotgun which remains pretty decent. Speaking of which Ravenholm introduces a bunch of zombies and really encourages you to use the gravity gun, so it’s where the game starts to come together. If you can make it through Ravenholm, then all of a sudden you’ll be in a hybrid D-Day / Starship Troopers battle, conducting a prison break and fighting a civil war in the streets. The game really picks up in the second half, so I can see why I thought it SUCKED after getting bored by the early stages of Ravenholm. If only I’d had a little more patience, and eaten a couple less pies my adolescence probably would’ve been better. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 after all.

So how does the game get better? After all, the first couple of hours would seemingly be what the game’s all about. Namely the occasional vehicle section, punctured by physics puzzles, faffing around and getting in combat encounters. You’ve got the zombies, some bugs and the combine who are mainly human soldier guys with the exception of some cyborg combat vehicles (half alien half pewpewpew). Well the main thing it does is stop locking you in rooms while someone talks to you, which it still does later on but with less frequency and with more interesting chatter. It also continues to introduce new enemy types, up until the closing stages of the game which are used to make combat encounters more interesting. The game remains highly linear, but with a few exceptions this isn’t a huge deal as areas make it fairly obvious where to go – and when you get lost, there’s some bonus ammo lying around. In an interesting nod to how games used to be, I found that a couple of times the route you were meant to take was actually somewhat hidden away. A small vent tucked in a corner or a door that seems to be blocked off, but is actually covered in physics objects that can be moved with the gravity gun. As a consequence the game flows well, but still requires you to think a little. As for the combat, as you start getting better guns it shockingly enough gets more enjoyable. You’re organically juggling through your weapons as the situation requires, instead of just using the SMG until you run out of ammo for it. It’s one of those cases where more is actually more. You learn more about the world, there are more enemy types to deal with. You have more weapons to deal with them, which requires juggling your ammo due to the tight maximum ammo restrictions. As a bonus the later stages are just more interesting in my opinion, obvious Ravenholm is cool and unique but the rest of the game hits a similar level.

Which means that OK the combat is good once you hit the halfway point, but what about the rest of the game? Well the graphics are perfectly fine for the time, although the Xbox version does have some long loading times and choppy frame-rates compared to any quasi-modern PC running the Steam version. The price is exceedingly reasonable these days, because it is a twenty year old game but still worth mentioning in a world where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 (the original) is still asking for 30 quid. The soundtrack is actually enjoyable, somewhat dated in terms of how it’s used, but it’s good at creating at an atmosphere and some of the tracks are certified club bangers. I’d even go so far as to say that the writing is good, as the characters are relatable and feel organic. Most of them are only used sparingly, but are still memorable due to strong performances. As for the setting and lore, it does a good job of showing not telling and many aspects of the game are deliberately left vague. The only thing I can really fault outside of the game’s slow start would be the noticeable gear-shift that the game has under the hood for it’s multiple loading screens. It’s not a huge deal, but the game does have a little moment every time you hit a stage transition (with multiple per level). The music abruptly stops, the game hangs for a moment, and then you pushed forward with the physics and power usage of your flash-light resetting. It’s especially noticeable when you’re in a vehicle, because the abrupt shove to the game’s physics often leads to some jerky handling.

In conclusion then Half Life 2 is a pretty solid game that has a very slow start. Seriously I can’t get over how much the game actively redeems itself once you get to Ravenholm and especially once you’re got to the latter stages of that level. Up until then it’s pretty bland, but once you actually get interested in the setting and can fully utilise the combat mechanics Half Life 2 really opens up. Everything else about it, aside from the console port is pretty good for the era. As for it’s much touted physics simulation, while it does add something to the gameplay I’d say it’s on the edge of just being a gimmick. The real reason to play the game is for the setting and maybe for the latter combat encounters. It remains very linear throughout, but that’s not always a bad thing. As such I’d give Half Life 2 a modest recommendation, with the caveat that you need to be willing to sit through the first 5 or so levels before it opens up.

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First up is the wannabe Star Fox imitator “Redout: Space Assault” (henceforth referred to as “AS”) which in spite of the name has nothing to do with the quasi-popular high speed racing game Redout, aside from one or two shared sound effects. Now Redout was widely seen as a spiritual successor to Wipeout on it’s release and while it did have some differences, that inspiration was pretty nakedly and unabashedly worn on it’s sleeve. Space Assault is a similar attempt to piggy-back off a formerly popular but now dormant IP, and unfortunately it completely and utterly sucks. The first of AS’s myriad issues is that it’s a mobile phone game port (yay!) which is not disclosed anywhere on it’s Steam page with the exception of the mixed review section. Now I was willing to let this one slide, against my better judgement, as I thought that a Star Fox clone didn’t really need many controls as the whole point is that it’s an on-rails shooter. So all you’d really need is the ability to shoot and do a modicum of movement across the screen, which theoretically a smartphone could handle. Alas the game handles poorly and has a weird feel to it that I can’t quite put into words, but essentially you always feel a little sluggish and the enemy projectiles have the same issue. This means dodging them can be weirdly annoying, an issue that really makes the game a pain in the butt. To make sure it wasn’t just a SKILL ISSUE I went and played the original Star Fox on SNES, only to discover that I didn’t have that issue at all and so it was just AS living up to it’s moniker.

But(t) of course just having weird controls and a suspect pedigree wouldn’t be enough for me to totally drop the game, as I’ve beaten around 600ish releases and honestly a lot of them had some issues. What makes AS so wretched is just the lack of any redeeming features. The story is cliché and bear in mind, this is cliché within the context of videogame writing. It is so, so, aggressively bland and utterly fails to provide even the flimsiest reason for the player to engage with it or care about any of the characters. These characters also don’t do themselves any favours because their dialogue is below “Direct-to-DVD sequel” levels and it feels like every line of dialogue was cranked out by a bored intern on a single, lazy afternoon. The voice actors meanwhile appear to be totally aware that the plot, writing and characters are all a big pool of wank because they put zero effort into their roles. In space no one can hear you scream, so why bother having any dialogue with emotion, wit, charm or warmth? I can only assume they had random members of staff perform these lines because honestly everyone has the same accents (despite ostensibly being a diverse international group) and no one can act. As for the rest of the sounds, you’ve got standard PEWPEW space laser noises. Alongside a totally forgettable OST with some occasional attempts to insert PUMPIN electronic music during the action sequences. Last but not least, you’ve got a missile lock-on noise so enjoy a slightly tinny beep beep beep every time an enemy shoots a missile at you – which they do quite frequently!

And you’ll need to frequently avoid those enemy missiles with a half-hearted barrel roll feature as you have a Hull strength life bar and a regenerating Shield. So far, so Sci-Fi. But for some reason a bunch of random attacks just ignore the shield, to the point that in the early game it’s pretty much 50/50 as to whether you can regenerate any damage or not. Fortunately the developers have included absolutely 0 penalty for dying (I guess it’s a phone game so they know the controls are garbage?) …Well that’s not entirely true, as you lose the money you’ve accumulated thus far in that mission when you are instantly respawned exactly where you died. Although as the money can only be used for really, really lousy upgrades that barely make a difference (e.g. you need to buy the missile upgrade ten times to go from shooting 3 missiles per salvo to 4) AND you get most of your money from objectives and upgrade cards (you can equip one of these at a time, and they do really exciting things like increase your shield bar by 6%) it’s a very light-touch punishment. Speaking of the missile upgrades, you have two main ways of attacking the baddies; your normal laser weapon which can be swapped during the game for a variety of equally useless types and missiles which are much better because they do more damage and auto-lock on. You have infinite ammo for both, but the enemy health bars have been deliberately designed so that you’ll need to constantly spam both weapons to clear through everything in good time. This wouldn’t be an issue, but some missions just abruptly end after around 3 minutes if you didn’t shoot enough of the bad guys down. But don’t worry, as the missions are very bland anyway and you’ll probably not even notice that you’re replaying them as they’re basically all premised around doing the same thing against the same enemies (seriously the Act 1 boss and the Act 2 boss are the same). To it’s credit the game does have some “free flight” missions where it dumps you in space surrounded by the same props that it uses in every other mission, but this time you need to find the enemies as they won’t come to you! This would be more interesting if your space ship didn’t feel really slow and, there was like, stuff going on but alas these missions blow chunks too. Oh and once you beat all the 48-ish missions the game comes with, that’s it as there are no other gameplay modes. Probably for the best to be honest.

Second up on the naughty step is a game that broke my big fat clogged heart, as it just has such a great concept. Big Mutha Truckers 2 (henceforth referred to as BMT2) is an attempt to marry Crazy Taxi with a big dumb parody of truckin’ across all 48 continental US states. Unfortunately this parody is really, really dull and is very predictable with every character falling short of the “amusing but played out” archetypes they’re aiming for and instead feel like a very uncreative pre-teen designed them. But it’s a quasi-budget release, so it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb and unoriginal so long as it’s a dumb kind of fun. After all, no one was that bothered when the Simpson’s made their own crazy taxi rip-off even though it had extremely familiar characters and very little original gameplay ideas. Unfortunately BMT2 is just… bad when it comes to the actual moment to moment gameplay and it feels like it was really, desperately hoping it would be carried by it’s tongue in cheek characters and world. Alas this doesn’t pan out, as neither the gameplay nor the writing is above D-tier and so you have two shoddily put together halves colliding to form a weak whole. There’s really not much to be said about the writing, other than the fact that every character is summed up in their entirety the first time you meet them and after a few encounters you’re just bored of them. You’ve got the Hollywood airhead, the douchebag celebrity, an Area 51 inspired alphabet agency spook, a couple of hill-billies, a generic greedy millionaire businessman and a corrupt Russian who spends the game on his big ass yacht. You go between these KOOKY, ZANY, THIGH-SLAPPING characters to earn cash by moving items that one of them will sell you on the cheap, to another character who is willing to pay more. Ostensibly there’s some strategy to this, but… there really isn’t. Just buy the cheapest items and Keep On Truckin’ til you make a profit while trying not to let the stale, repeated character quips get you down.

And trust me, I don’t enjoy writing this as the game has a sort-of heart to it. You can tell the developers wanted to make an amusing game, but much like with Cel Damage the humour is simultaneously going to go over the heads of the well-behaved kids and yet isn’t funny enough for the grown ups. It’s just stuck that awkward spot, much like a stand-up comedian who’s bombing because their material just isn’t that good. You don’t hate it, but you do wish it would end if only to save everyone’s sanity. As for the gameplay, as mentioned above it’s pretty basic and while you can use the money to buy upgrades they don’t really make that much of a difference, because pretty the whole game is split between two activities. The first is driving from character to character to make that sweet, sweet money. The second is compromised of missions, which also involve driving from place to place but have a bit more effort put into them even if they’re still pretty bland. The big issue here is just that the driving mechanics aren’t very well implemented, so you have a game that’s almost entirely based on driving and the driving isn’t very good. Sure there are some moderately entertaining environmental hazards (and the cops) to watch out for, like UFOs stealing your cargo, but these are little sprinklings of inspiration that are trying to distract you from the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are bad and that the game just isn’t funny. Unlike Redout Space Assault this game does have plenty of content, but most of it’s locked behind delivering enough cargo to store up money so you can the next mission which plays the same as the grinding so that you can then grind so more to unlock the next mission and so and so forth. There are one or two features that are actually OK, such as the ability to set a time limit between destinations with lower limits providing a larger delivery bonus (which encourages and rewards skill) and a variety of radio stations ala GTA including a talk show with a decent amount of content. It’s just that none of it is good and there’s a reason that this franchise died on it’s ass with mediocre reviews. If you played this game as a kid, hang onto those memories and do not bother revisiting BMT2. Especially as the current Steam port is so busted that even basic Steam features like the overlay and screenshots don’t work.

Last but not least in our trinity of tedium, we have Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop which is the sequel of sorts to Alien Swarm the throwaway Valve project that was most notable for letting the player receive a free TF2 hat. Unlike either of the two preceding games, I didn’t pay anything for this one but instead came across it while searching for a free game that I could play with a friend on his lousy laptop. As such you might argue that it doesn’t deserve it’s place on this list, as it’s literally free and to my knowledge doesn’t even have a monetisation system due to the fact that it’s a labour of love from a dedicated modding community. Yet in spite of the potential for a cute little underdog story, I’m including it here for the simple reason that neither me nor my friend enjoyed it. In fact the more we played, the more frustrated we became as while the game has some good ideas it’s also riddled with questionable design choices that got on our collective tits. Due to it’s price I promise not to be as mean to it, but still why the fuck does the infestation system require you to place a medkit down and then wait for some god damn long? Who thinks this is fun? Who thought “oh my goodness we’ve made the game BETTER take THAT Greg Coomer”??? There’s a ton of content in this game, but also a lot of WHY’s that remain on our minds after playing through the first campaign and mutually agreeing that we are not going to bother with the rest because fuck that noise.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, because many of you are probably asking “what the hell even is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop?” Well I’m glad you asked dear reader, as it’s a top-down shooter that allows up to 4 player co-op in which your team is split between around 8 characters and 4 classes. Each class has two characters who are slightly different in terms of their stats, but these stats don’t seem to matter that much anyway so I think this is more for the advanced players to care about. As me and my buddy were casuals only playing the game because we were running out of options, we just went with a medic (because otherwise you are guaranteed to die) and a Tech Marine because they’re mandatory for most of the missions. Once you’ve chosen a character you get a surprisingly extensive unlock system, where you pick 1 weapon, 1 weapon or utility item and then one equippable item. There’s a variety of guns, but also some more interesting tools like a deployable sentry turret, a medkit that heals the squad, an ammo pack for the squad and a bunch of other things that aren’t weapons per see but are useful tools for the entire squad. Then there’s that utility item which is generally a bit mediocre, such as the ability to weld the occasional door, take a bit less damage (not that matters much), lay down mines, take a personal medkit for emergency heals and so on. Once you’ve picked your squad and your gear, you’re then able to play through any of the game’s approximately eleven multi-mission campaigns. These missions might have sections where you need to use a certain item to clear the path, such as big rocks that need to be destroyed with a mining laser or hive-growth that needs to be destroyed with a flamethrower (or a mining laser). Unfortunately the game doesn’t tell you if this is going to be the case, but in our experience the map-makers are generous enough to provide those items when they are needed to prevent you from being totally stuck. Now as for all these shiny new weapons, they’re generally pretty varied but they all have not that much ammo which is a problem in a game where you are shooting things a lot. Missions do tend to give you some more ammo every now and then, but generally speaking you need to be careful with your shots (especially as friendly fire is enabled) and even your reloads as reloading a magazine throws any remaining ammunition away. Plus reloading can take a surprisingly long time for a game in which even the basic enemies can knock you around like a pinata, which is somewhat negated by the introduction of the active reload system that’s also used in Gears of War.

So the game itself is free, it has a lot of content, why is it in the did-not-finish triad? Well aside from the counter-productive nature of the game having eleven freaking campaigns which feels a tad excessive frankly the biggest issue is just that most of the enemies are annoying to deal with. You’ve got the standard grunts who can almost stun lock you, as their attacks knock you back a little bit and can mess you up more than they otherwise would. Then you’ve got ranged enemies which love to hang out just off-screen while pelting you, big fat enemies that eat up a lot of ammo then explode, annoying little enemies that spawn into the game world with a little jump that makes them temporarily immune to gun fire and are too quick to melee. Plus there are flying enemies that are a fucking pest because they’re so small and fast, spawners that spawn in those little enemies with their stupid little jumps constantly and are a chore, especially as when they die spawn more. Wrapping up the selection of annoying enemies are levelled up ranged baddies that fling explosives at you and finally (from what we played anyway) a boss monster that is immune to damage from the front and takes a lot of bullets being fired into their ass to give up. Oh and of course I almost forget the small infectors who will take you from full health to fully dead (no respawning btw) in about 6 seconds unless your medic deploys the tiny medkit with it’s tiny healing radius next to you. An action that takes slightly more fumbling than you’d hope for, and if you’ve split up or they’re picking their nose it’s over for you. As a bonus if the medic dies, then everyone who isn’t a medic can’t take their medkit tool so after that it’s basically sudden death. Did I mention that the basic bitch enemies are almost constantly respawning? Because once you combine that with the skimpy amounts of ammo, the game does become a bit of an endurance test. Can you and your friends manage to get through an entire campaign without getting frustrated at the game? Great, then go do another 10! The scoreboards tell you if your friends bothered, and I can safely say that all of mine gave up around the end of the first campaign. Because this is a game with a lot of love put into it, by people with questionable test in videogames. It’s the quintessential problem with the fan project, namely that the fans are really into the base game and so they’ve made a game that’s only going to be of interest for people who really into the base game. Imagine if they made L4D3 but each player had a specific type of mini-game they’d occasionally have to do, and if any of your team died you got to eat a big mouthful of shit. That’s basically the Alien Swarm: Reactive drop experience. A great game for those who really want a 4 player co-op top-down shooter that requires coordination, but a bad game for those who don’t have 3 friends with those interests. The best I could do was one additional buddy, and he kept dying which meant that I slowly lost the will to live. After clearing out 3 of the boss enemies, avoiding infection, fighting through the whole map and then rushing our way back out, I died at the final hurdle because the extraction objective wanted to make things more exciting by taking even fucking longer than it usually did. Oh and did I mention my buddy kept dying because you can’t see shit in most of the areas of each map, as everything is made deliberately dark so that the game can have a spooky horror vibe. Either find 3 patient friends with plenty of co-op top-down shooter experience, or crank the brightness up and hope for the best. Either way, it’s an acquired taste much like that freakish Corsican cheese that’s filled with maggots and mould. You might have a great time and I wouldn’t think less of you for doing so, but we didn’t and that’s why we cut our losses.

And that’s the trio, each of which I’m proud to say are in different genres and from developers (or modders) of varying pedigree. Unlike the slightly meaty promise at the start, I didn’t end up HATING all of them and in fact consider Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop to be fairly impressive in it’s own right. As for the other two however, they can eat my big fat arse as they are fucking garbage and I am mad that people are inadvertently still paying real money for them. Of the three, I’d give Alien Swarm: RD a tentative chance of redemption as we all love modders really, but the other two should be avoided at all costs. Especially Redout: Space Assault as the developers really should know bloody better than to shit out such a woeful and half-assed game. If you disagree with my take on the worst Starfox clone I’ve ever had the misfortune to play, then get on your bike. At least Big Mutha Truckers 2 was trying (albeit failing) to be entertaining and to offer something a bit different. It had heart, if not only brains or intelligently designed gameplay. Redout: Space ASSault is the definition of a bland, boring, ambitionless, uncreative, tedious gaming experience. They couldn’t even be bothered to avoid repeating the boss fights. Fuck that game. I did hate it, and Big Mutha Truckers 2 was a Big Mutha Pile of Poo (don’t complain about this petty and childish insult, it’s exactly the level of dialogue and writing from that game) even if it’s not quite so reprehensible because intention matters. In conclusion, Redout: Space Assault is fucking woeful, Big Mutha Truckers 2 is a Mutha-Trucking disappointment and Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop is just a bit of a pain in the backside.

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Before delving into what makes Fire Emblem 7 such an enjoyable game, I’m just going to mention two things that may be deal-breakers for the uninitiated or even those who are looking to play this game after experiencing some of the newer games in the series. Firstly much like the newer games, Fire Emblem 7 has a decent amount of RNG or Random Number Generation involved, as every attack will have a chance of missing and a chance of inflicting a critical hit. Even if a lot of enemies won’t have a chance to inflict one of these crits (which are worth x3 the normal amount of damage inflicted), the bosses and certain enemies definitely will. Plus there’s always a chance that your guy will whiff their blow, leading to you either taking more damage than expected or possibly dying. So far so XCOM, but then much like XCOM Fire Emblem 7 throws another spanner into the works by making it so that the death of any character aside from your trio of plot-critical lords is a permanent death. As such your options are either to play through the game with the spectre of perma death always looming over (almost) every single character, or you can take the slightly more cowardly route by resetting the game every single time a character dies – which of course means that you’ll need to play through the level from the very beginning. No matter how you slice it Fire Emblem 7 can be a brutal game, and while I don’t condone it I can understand why both Nintendo and Intelligent Systems decided to make the permadeath optional in later games.

With that out of the way, Fire Emblem 7 is one of my favourite games for the MIGHTY Gameboy Advance (GBA) and a fantastic game that I think anyone with some patience will be able to enjoy. It’s a Turn Based Strategy (TBS) game that borrows heavily from RolePlaying Games’s and as such can also be considered as a Strategy RPG (SRPG), with both the player and the enemy in the form of bandits, cultists and other ne’er-do-wells moving all of their units one at a time during their respective turn. For the player each character is a unique unit with some custom art, a backstory, their own inventory which can hold up to 5 items and their own skills split into 8 categories which each increase as they gain levels. For the enemy they have hordes of disposable grunts to be used at will, with many levels causing more enemies to spawn in during certain turns and often from an irritating angle which will force you to take considerable care when using your more fragile units. All units in the game are split into various classes, each of which can use a handful of the game’s weapon and spell types and due to the game’s balance each class is therefore good against certain other classes but in turn weak against others. The first piece of the puzzle is the fact that weapons and magic both fit into a triangle system, with axes beating lances, lances beating swords and swords beating axes – while arcane magic beats light magic, light magic beats dark magic and dark magic beats arcane magic. Then you’ve got the fact that different classes (and by extension characters) not only have different amounts of movement points, but these classes also tend to empathise certain skills at the expense of others. Heavily armoured knights and generals have high defence and attack for example, but have low resistance making them weak against magic and low speed which means enemies can often get two blows in. Mages on the other hand have relatively high resistance and can attack at a slight distance, but are weak against physical attacks and generally have modest amounts of health. The intersecting nature of these classes ensures that no one unit is strong against everything, so you need to use your entire squad as a team lest your favourite unit get dog-piled and ground down by the enemy.

Then just when you think you’ve got everything in hand, the game’s inventory system pops up to nag you. The trouble is, while there are myriad weapons within the game each weapon can only be used a certain number of times before it breaks. Remember how you can only hold 5 items on each character? Well that means that you’ll need to factor in your weapon and how many hits it can dish out before it breaks, lest your unit be weapon less and thus unable to hurt a fly during the middle of a large skirmish. Before you ask, no you can’t repair items for most of the game (and when you can it’s only via a rare staff that in turn can only repair 3 weapons before it breaks) meaning that you’ll probably want to carry spares around. Then as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve got classes that can carry up to 3 weapon types and you’ve got to consider how the quality of certain weapons/spells. You see not only do you have multiple weapon types, but you have multiple weapons within each type alongside some rare weapons which are effective against certain types of enemies. Generally speaking weapons go from Iron to Steel to Silver, with each type of weapon only being usable by characters with a high enough level in that weapon type. Oh and the better weapons not only cost more but can be used less before they break. So it’s entirely possible that you’ll have a character with a Steel Sword, a Steel Lance, backups for each and then a unique weapon such as the Axereaver which inverts the weapons triangle (i.e. it’s a lance that’s good against axes but weak against swords). It all gets somewhat complicated very quickly, but that’s part of the fun and it’s a good way to ensure that you’re invested in finding new loot before it’s pilfered by enemy thieves and to go out of your way to rescue villages before they’re pillaged by enemy bandits. If it’s all sounding a bit much then don’t panic, as you can store (temporarily) un-needed items with your supply convoy after a certain point in the story.

Due to all of this Fire Emblem 7 can be a complex game of cat and mouse as you manoeuvre your troops around, dodging enemy reinforcements (or funnelling them towards the right units) while you consider which weapons to use. This gives the game a nice feeling of depth and outside of the occasional piece of absolutely terrible luck, the game is well balanced and most deaths really are your fault – you MONSTER. As alluded to above there are also ways to gain new items outside of buying them from shops which appear in some levels, such as by killing enemies (who automatically drop any items they have in their inventory that are coloured green), stealing items from enemies with your thief, by visiting friendly villages before they are ransacked by enemy brigands/pirates and even by recruiting units to your side. Yes that’s right, some levels contain enemies which will “give you” a hint at the start of most missions via their dialogue with other units that reveals that they know one of the characters on your team. If you can get this unit into melee range with that named enemy, then you’ll be able to convince them to join your team and to stop aiding the bad guys. Of course this inherently involves some risk as now your unit is in melee range of that unit, which might place them in a sticky spot. And as if all that wasn’t enough, you might also be in a mission with a named friendly NPC (who appear as Green units) who has to be chatted to before they end up suiciding themselves by charging the enemy. These interactions are themselves often quite sweet and involve an abrupt change of heart on the part of the enemy, with many of these recruitable characters being powerful indeed. Or you can just kill them because you are a MONSTER.

As for the characters themselves they can all be described as charming archetypes, most of whom are suitably simple to understand for a game with modest pretensions to being a full RPG but who are still entertaining enough to justify their screen time. You’ve got nervous and naïve knights, gambling obsessed swordsmen, men of duty, men who are just in it for the sheer THRILL of adventure and much more besides. Ultimately you’ll be able to find a few characters that you enjoy, as while most of them are relatively shallow each of them feels like a D&D character and you’ll inevitably have your favourites. These characters are then able to propel a story that is likewise fairly simple, but which definitely has it’s moments and which manages to create an Arthurian feel of a world which has it’s noble lords and wicked villains, it’s power hungry despots and it’s wise sages. The whole game is brimming with charm and character, even if almost all of it is told through plain unspoken text (with a little bit of fantasy tweaking and dated verbiage) and static imagery. Of course there are a few exceedingly short cutscenes, but due to the limitations of the MIGHTY GBA the game is limited in how it presents itself. Fortunately it more than makes up for these limitations via some great artwork which is occasionally used to great effect in showcasing how the world appears through the eyes of it’s characters.

Further complimenting the occasional piece of high definition artwork (Relatively speaking, it is the GBA after all) is a great art style for units and gameplay which is simultaneously easy to read but still looks great in spite of the system’s limitations. Units may only be made out of a handful of pixels, but both the animations and art design is excellent and makes the game visually pleasing to the eye. Critical hit animations are stylish without feeling overlong, each class feels unique and I’m always surprised by how much a simple colour pallet change or slight tweak can make a character or enemy feel unique. As for the music, it’s also great in spite of the system’s limitations even if the number of tracks and their length is fairly limited. You will be hearing the same battle theme again, and again and again but fortunately each theme is handled well as is instantly recognisable. Fire Emblem 7 is therefore a great example of how much can be done with a limited amount of headroom and is an exceedingly efficient game in the way that it’s able to contain close to 40 unique levels, a full OST with around 30 tracks, almost the same amount of units and myriad weapons/spells all in one exceptionally small package.

Then when you reach the end and face off against the final boss, which is a total pain in the butt btw, the game gives you a charming ending screen which explains what each character does after the world has been saved. By that point you might think the game is over, as you’ll have encountered many characters, plenty of dialogue and wrapped up close to 30 levels. But then the game reveals that actually you’ve got an extra route revolving around Lord Hector that you can playthrough (who is otherwise portrayed as Eliwood’s stalwart pal but doesn’t have much autonomy). Oh and if that wasn’t enough then you can also replay Lyn’s route (the first 12 levels) and Eliwoods route (the other 18ish levels) in a newly unlocked Hard mode which is even more challenging. As such the game that has pretty much everything including great art direction, a solid difficulty curve, plenty of strategic head-scratching and a surprisingly good plot with charming characters reveals that it has plenty of replayability too. Oh and did I mention that there are multiple levels that only appear if you meet specific requirements, such as completing a level under a certain amount of turns, killing a fleeing enemy or by “rescuing” a hostile unit that would otherwise try and kill you? To see everything you’ll need to play through both the normal Lyn & Eliwood route, then the Lyn & Hector route and you’ll need to do both while meeting these hidden objectives. Fortunately you can always check a guide to see what’s needed, but I’ll warn you now that knowing how to unlock a hidden stage and actually unlocking it are not the same thing and some of them can be quite challenging to unlock.

In summary then Fire Emblem 7 is a game that can be challenging, complicated and occasionally unforgiving but which is nevertheless a fantastic game brimming with charm and content. There’s always a twist awaiting the player, whether it’s a new enemy type, a new plot development or a new hidden stage and while the game can occasionally be frustrating it’s almost never unfair. Every mechanic compliments each other nicely and the game excels with it’s solid gameplay, great visuals and charming cast of characters. Ultimately Fire Emblem 7 is a game that anyone can enjoy and one that I would highly recommend to anyone, although these days copies can be expensive as this was always a relatively niche series (at least until Awakening encouraged you to have babies with your waifu which caused every weeaboo in the world to become a gushing fanboy). If you see this game in the wild be sure to pick it up, and if you can’t afford it then just know that you can’t really afford to let Fire Emblem 7 pass you by either, so do what you have to (*cough* emulation *cough*) to experience it for yourself.

The post Fire Emblem 7: The Blazing Blade appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Metal Slug Advance is one of those games that I bought on a whim during my youth and which has been languishing in my backlog for far too long. Not only has the store I bought it from long since ceased to exist, but the company that controlled the chain has had to be rescued from bankruptcy on multiple occasions. That’s not to say that I never played it of course, but for whatever reason I was never able to finish the darn thing despite it being an ostensibly short game, and so it sat in a cupboard for years once I’d moved onto the DS and then 3DS. I did try playing it again via an emulator a few years ago, but ended up struggling on the final boss and took a break before life got the better of me and I ended up moving country three times, working in half a dozen jobs and so on. The third time is the charm however, and I’ve finally gotten around to finishing what turns out to be a difficult but surmountable shoot em up experience. Which really shouldn’t be anything to write home about, as this game only has FIVE stages (well 6, but read on for more details) and the first four will only take most players a few hours to beat as the game has unlimited continues.

The catch to using these continues however is seemingly minor at first, but quickly becomes more pronounced the further through the game you play. Essentially as you play through each stage, there are around 16ish prisoners to free and around 16ish cards to collect. Now you won’t be collect all of those cards initially, as some of the cards are required to gather other cards (for example by unlocking hidden routes within the stages). Most of these cards are decorative and don’t do anything, in fact around 60% of them can be described in this way. Similarly, the majority of prisoners you rescue will just give you a healing item or special weapon (which can only be used briefly before it’s ammo runs out) and so the benefit to rescuing them is modest. The remainder of the cards however, provide various bonuses and modifiers which can be extremely powerful. Examples include reducing the damage taken by your controllable vehicles (including the Metal Slug itself) by 50%, doubling the amount of ammo you have for special weapons, or doubling the amount of grenades you start with. With that being said, the catch is that if you use one of those continues during a stage you lose any cards/prisoners you acquired throughout the mission. In other words, to keep your powerful new bonuses you need to be able to beat the entire mission without dying once.

Fortunately unlike other Metal Slug games, you don’t die in one hit and instead have a health bar which enables you to survive multiple blows. Of course nothing is given away for free, as unlike in the arcade or anthology you can’t just enable unlimited credits to let you blitz your way through the game. Instead you’ll need to play somewhat cautiously as while you can survive multiple wounds, healing items are fairly rare and never appear during the boss battles. In addition, the i-frames (invincibility frames) are quite short and as such it’s often only too easy to be hit, become temporarily invincible and then get hit again during the same boss attack or by the same gaggle of enemy grunts. This means that the stages are mostly easy to beat, but tough to master as each stage has 3 or 4 components split up by checkpoints, but you can’t use any of these checkpoints should you wish to gain those permanent buffs. The stages themselves are each inspired by the previous games and many of the enemies, art work and even attack patterns are copied over from mainline entries in the series. This means that you’ll be facing standards rebels, mask-wearing aztec (or inca?) inspired foes, the maggots from MS2’s mummy levels and so much more throughout a single stage. Fortunately all of this holds up well on the humble Gameboy Advance and outside of some of the blood effects and gore, you’d struggle to tell that this wasn’t a straight port of the originals (well of course the stages are a bit different too, but you get what I mean).

One area in which the GBA struggles a bit however is in handling all of those enemies at once. You see, the game does a good job of managing the levels as the camera follows your perspective slightly which lets you see further ahead despite the small screen resolution. This means it’s fairly rare for enemy attacks to appear out of nowhere off-screen. The way the game’s able to do this is that it spawns enemies in slightly ahead of your perspective, but rarely without sufficient time for you to react. Unfortunately the game also spawns in enemies where you’re looking, regardless of whether you’ve already killed them or not. As a consequence it’s possible to fight your way through a section of the stage, then need to jump backwards to avoid an enemy attack, causing new enemies to respawn into the fray. This may have been an intentional design choice, but if it is then it’s a very annoying one as it happens not only across stage transitions but also throughout every stage with there not being a ton of leeway given before retreating results in more baddies popping up. Additionally both enemies and prisoners are prone to despawning, so if you were to free a prisoner from their constraints but then get knocked down to a lower area of the same stage, then that prisoner can disappear until you reload the level. Which requires either beating the stage and starting it again, or losing all progress made thus far. It’s a tedious aspect of the prisoner and card collecting mechanic that holds Metal Slug Advance back a little bit.

As for the levels that you’ll be playing through again and again, they’re generally pretty good. As mentioned earlier they do a good job of blending various assets together from the rest of the series and as such the enemy variety is strong and most stages are just long enough to feel complete without being a total slog to replay for those cards. Generally the difficulty in Metal Slug Advance is easy-enough and I’d say anyone who has played through any mainline Metal Slug game will know what to expect, with one exception. The bosses. Now the first couple of bosses aren’t too bad and in fact I’d say both Stage 1 and Stage 2 are quite easy, lending themselves nicely to a cheeky replay for those bonus cards. Stage 3 is more of a pain and I struggled to get through it to collect some of the power-up cards if I’m being totally honest. Stage 4 is a bit harder but the boss is slightly easier, once you know the patterns and so it’s entirely possible to get through it without too much trouble. Regardless I’d say that getting all of the prisoners and cards in these stages will take some patience, as one death will screw everything up and most of your deaths are going to come from the bosses at the very end of the level. Then you’ve got Stage 5 which is, to put it charitably, a digital haemorrhoid. The stage itself has a ton of replayability as it splits into multiple segments, starting with either a jet vehicle section (or you can eject for a different level) before you start going through the enemy base. This base has a lot of powerful hidden cards within it, but also some dead-ends and so you’ll need to work your way through it many a time to get everything. Especially as some of these cards are will hidden, and will require you to shoot at innocuous props and background items so that you can reveal them (honestly I’d recommend a guide if you’re going to do this). Then once you’ve fought tooth-and-nail through a brutal gauntlet of enemies, you have the worst boss in the game and in my humble opinion one of the worst bosses in the series. In fact beating the 5th boss with continues took me longer than the rest of the game combined. It was so brutal I’m going to include a little guide at the end of this review. Suffice it to say, if you can beat the game you’ve already proven yourself. But to get 100% will require going above and beyond!

Once you’ve cleared through the 5 stages, there isn’t much left outside of the card collecting and prisoner liberating to do. Although there is a bonus 6th stage (albeit without a boss) that contains another batch of cards and prisoners to liberate. The catch is that this bonus stage is quite long, relatively difficult and of course has multiple routes through it so you’ll need to replay it multiple times choosing different routes to get everything (kind of like stage 5 on steroids). The only catch is that to unlock the sixth stage, you’ll need to beat stage 5 without dying as you need one of the stage 5 cards. Honestly it’s a ballache and I would not be surprised if only a modest % of the player base bothered. With that being said I think it’s proof that despite being short, Metal Slug Advance has a surprising of content and on balance it’s a great experience for shoot em up fans or Metal Slug appreciators who are looking for some new content. Between the strong graphics, high levels of replayability and decent performance on the GBA this is a solid game and one that’s great for the right type of player. Those who aren’t looking for a challenge, or are new to shoot em ups should start elsewhere unless they’ve got something to prove. For them, I’d recommend the Metal Slug Anthology as it contains multiple games with the ability to use unlimited credits so you can practice, practice practice until you’re confident enough to beat stages in one go. Then you’ll be ready to get 100% in Metal Slug Advance and save the world, Forever(?)

If you’re still reading, then you’re probably looking for some help with the final boss. God only knows I was, as the endless deaths were brutal and of course getting through the entire stage and the boss without dying is frankly a nightmare. As such I’m going to make a list of tips that I found very helpful for dealing with the final boss of Metal Slug Advance. I’m also going to link a Youtube video of some guy beating the final boss, without any powerups, grenades, etc. You can find that here.

• Pre-battle pro-tip: You can bring a tank into this fight if you go the following route through the enemy base – Go down at the first option, then up every time thereafter. Towards the end there will be a Metal Slug for you to use, but you’ll need to shepherd it through two more segments (slightly easier than it sounds) before you’ll through to the boss. This tank is useful even without upgrade cards as it gives you some extra heath, an unlimited MG while driving it and you can abuse i-frames when entering and exiting it. Alternatively always going up is the shortest route and thus exposes you to the least danger (although there isn’t much to collect).
• Boss attack 1 – The Drones: I HATE these little freaks, my best advice is to use the small window before they spawn to get some shots off at the boss and to then immediately duck down to the bottom area. You’ll be able to jump around 4 times before they start to spawn. If you touch the top of them, you take damage so you want to be below them. They can take around 16 pistol shots or 2 grenades (or a mix) so you need to focus on one. Be very careful that you don’t jump up onto a ledge, as getting down without taking damage is a real hassle. If you can take out one, the other is easy to deal with. The 2nd one you kill drops a Heavy Machinegun pick-up, but it despawns very quickly so try not to kill them when they’re high up in the air.
• Boss attack 2 – The floating lasers: This part isn’t too bad, and while you’ll be tempted to sit it out entirely it offers a great opportunity to do some damage. Just keep an eye on the pattern (generally it alternates per shot from left to right and they go through each side of the two platforms in variation). You’ll want to keep jumping back and forth to give you more reaction time, but you’ll get the hang of this pattern fairly quickly. Just be careful not to waste your MG ammo by jumping behind you then firing, as you’ll shoot behind you. If you’ve started shooting, then your movements will be the same but you’ll keep facing ahead of you – use this to your advantage
• Boss attack 2.5 – At this stage the boss will reuse the laser attack from the Stage 3 boss directly beneath. Do NOT stand there! The platforms will then fall to the ground.
• Boss attack 3 – The reflecting lasers: A very annoying attack to deal with. Before it starts you have a brief window to pour damage onto the boss, take full advantage of this by jumping up and down as the closer you are the less distance your bullets have to travel, meaning the more bullets you can fire off in a short time. Once the attack starts, try to stay directly in the middle and keep firing upwards while jumping over the various shots. You’ll need to move slightly, but generally directly under the bosses weakspot is the best place to be and moving from side to side will result in you getting trapped in either corner. Refer to the video I linked to see a good example of how this strategy works.
• If you do everything right, you should only need to survive these patterns twice before the boss has taken critical damage and starts being on fire. At this point the attack patterns will change, albeit the existing one will continue (so if you do critical damage during the reflecting lasers stage, you’ll have that stage before the next stage is upgraded).
• Boss Attack 4 – The DRONES: Now there are 3 (one spawns after you kill one) of them, and they stagger their shots which sounds like a small change but makes them so much difficult to deal with. Keep focusing on them one at a time, I’d also consider saving some grenades for this section as these drones are surprisingly durable. Personally I used about 5 or 6 grenades on the boss once it started being on fire and saved the rest for clutch moments against these damn drones.
• Boss Attack 5 – Pewpewpewpewpew: This is a very quick two-tier laser attack that hits basically the whole stage, so you’ll need good reaction times to find a sweet spot and to then move quickly from it as the sweet spots are then hit on the second barrage around a second later. If you’ve playing it right, you should have to survive this once (or maybe twice)
• Boss Attack 6 (sort of) – Faster floating lasers: This is the same as the previous attack, but about 50% faster. The technique is the same, but it’s hard to pull off. I’d suggest using this pattern as an opportunity to use up your first 6 grenades before things really get tough.
• Boss Attack 6.5 – That stage 3 laser attack again, it’s unchanged
• Boss Attack 7 – Oh my goodness, more lasers: If you thought the reflecting lasers were bad try this one on for size. You’ll be hit by a barrage of lasers that sweep the stage in a similar fashion to the previous attack. It takes longer, but you won’t have those platforms getting in the way. Again you’ll only need to survive this once (or maybe twice). Unfortunately much like the previous attack there’s no consistent sweet spot and they come in quick so you’ll need to either have plenty of health saved, abuse the tank’s i-frames or just have damn good reflexes.

Basically the challenge with the boss is avoiding all damage during the first half, then trying to finish off the second as quickly as possible. Make full use of the MG drops and then use grenades once it’s already on fire. I’m not going to pretend this is an easy fight by any means, but I was able to overcome it and I have a coordination difficulty so hopefully you’ll be fine. If you’re just going for a casual playthrough, there’s no shame in continuing again and again until you’ve got those patterns down. Hope this helps!

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Quick Note: As of the time of writing (July 2023), Killzone: Liberation has multiple levels locked behind a free DLC delivery service that no longer works. While there are workarounds available, you’ll either need to locate the files and manually install them on your modded PSP or download a specific pre-patched .iso to enable them to work on an emulator of your choice. Unfortunately emulators cannot easily install the DLC due to a bespoke patching system that was used, so if you want to play the final chapter you’ll need to do some digging ahead of time. Alternatively honest and law abiding citizens can buy the shiny new remaster

Killzone Liberation is a great and relatively unique game in the sense that it manages to feel like a standard Killzone game without taking place in a first person perspective. Instead of following in the steps of other FPS games on the PSP (such as Syphon Filter), the developers at Guerrilla decided to transport the series into a cover-based isometric shooter with generally positive results. Despite only having one thumbstick to play with, the control is by and large perfectly acceptable and camera issues are rare in spite of the scale of the game which features multiple large (for the system) levels. The game itself is set two months after the original Killzone and has you controlling Templar, a captain in the ISA (Interplanetary Strategic Alliance) and one man army in the fight against the Helghast forces on Vekta who are still attempting to subjugate the planet in spite of their losses in the first game. The use of recurring characters and the way that the game is closely tied in to the rest of the series is somewhat surprising for a portable “spin-off” game, even if the plot is largely nothing special. Essentially the Helghast are the baddies, as denoted by the fact that they have nazi-motiffs, brooding commanders and seemingly innumerable hordes of grunts that scream about how they want you to suffer or that they’re going to slaughter you. As for the ISA, they’re a fairly generic sci-fi America with the standard issue amount of quips and allusions to “liberty” and “freedom”. Fans of the series will probably be aware of how these concepts were toyed around with in the other killzone games and media, but for the purposes of Liberation they are played entirely straight which is honestly fine. I can’t imagine anyone picked this game up for the plot, myself included.

Instead most people picked it up for two reasons, the gameplay and the visuals both of which have been heavily refined and hold up pretty well (hence why it got a re-release on PS4 and PS5 relatively recently). Starting with the visuals, they’re surprising good for a handheld system and are light-years ahead of anything that the DS could put out and frankly are seemingly beyond the reach of even the 3DS which came out years later. Now I did play this on an emulator (as my PSP is in my parent’s attic in a box somewhere), but even allowing for the various upscaling and AA that was applied it is still a visually impressive game that seems more akin to a PS2 release than a PS1 game. While some finer details are lacking, the game is able to successfully present a variety of different enemy types and environments while still packing CGI cutscenes and in-engine cutscenes that look great. There are also plenty of nice touches including splash effects for water, glass shattering during shoot-outs and even the visual cues related to the awareness level of enemies (yellow eye-visors for oblivious, orange for alert but hunting, red for actively pursuing you). Guerrilla have always been capable for showcasing the potential visual fidelity that various PlayStation systems have offered and Killzone: Liberation is no exception to the rule.

And while I’ve personally found Guerrilla games to be a bit hit-or-miss in the past, I can confirm that Killzone: Liberation is my own personal exception to the rule as it is in my opinion the most enjoyable game in the series. The reason for this is simple, the isometric gameplay system they’ve adopted is punishing but at the same time highly engaging. As much as I yelled at this damn game and cursed the various people who worked on it, I can’t deny that everything just clicks in a way that so many other developers can’t match. Templar is a one man army, but he is always on the brink of getting overrun and a snap judgement will either save his bacon or condemn him to an abrupt and inglorious end (and you to the load checkpoint screen). The reason for this is simple, you don’t have that much health or that much ammo at any given time and the various Helghast you’re up against are specialised and quite often gluttons for punishment. Even the simple soldier can be a pain to deal with as you’ll need to use up a whole magazine to deal with them, assuming you land your shots (which is finnicky) and that they aren’t in cover and that you don’t get flanked by their comrades in arms. There are also so many types of enemy to deal with that they’re constantly getting introduced throughout the game, all the way up to the midpoint of the final (non-DLC) chapter. In addition, the game utilises elevation and cover to block shots meaning that you’ll need to make use of the R-shoulder button to duck lest you get shredded by the barrage of enemies. These enemies also make use of cover, alongside strategic use of the elevation and melee attacks which knock you on your ass.

Once you add in the boss fights, the dastardly way that the developers just love to screw with you sometimes (e.g. putting bombs in the hitherto safe supply crates) and the fact that the various enemy types can synchronise in brutal fashion you have a real fight on your hands. To give a brief example, the game often likes to send one or two regular goons your way and a specialised trooper (such as a sniper or shotgunner). If you focus on the specialised trooper you’ll get mown down by the regular goons, if you focus on the goons you’ll get flushed out of cover by the specialist or just killed near instantly depending on their type. Oh and there are turrets, mines, tripwires and the occasional vehicle to deal with as well. The Helghast are legion and you’re still trying to be the “One Man Army” for better or (frequently) for worse.

Well that’s not entirely true, one part of Killzone: Liberation that I wasn’t expecting but is actually mainly well handled is the fact that multiple missions have you teaming up with another character from the first game. There are a handful of one-off “buddies” as the game calls them, such as a general packing a revolver and some scaredy-cat VIPs that don’t do much, but you spend around half the game working with either Rico or Luger who put in serious effort to steal the spotlight from you. Rico has a machine gun and a propensity to call the enemy ASSHOLE (seriously he says it almost every time he starts shooting a new enemy), while Luger has a crossbow that shoots explosive bolts. Just be careful as your buddies are so keen to be the hero that they’ll shoot you if you get in the way of their shots and will take damage if they run in front of you while you’re shooting. They’ll even get pissy and punch you if you hurt them too much, apparently oblivious to the fact that there’s a game over screen tied to your health bar.

Both have their own health pool that can be replenished via a healing syringe, and if they’re reduced to 0hp then you’ll need to give them a shot in the arm within 20 seconds or they’ll die FOREVER. Fortunately these syringes are fairly plentiful and so you don’t really need to worry about their health, unless they get stuck directly in front of a turret or are getting bullied by the shield-toting melee Helghast enemy type. They’re invaluable for splitting the enemies attention and can hold their own, while essentially doubling your damage output. Unfortunately they’re never there when you really need them (like in the boss fights) but I guess the developers wanted you to work for that taste of sweet, sweet, victory. One last thing worth noting is that they can also be bossed around via an orders overlay, which lets you tell them to focus on a specific enemy, use their ability to make the level proceed (C4 for Rico, grappling hook for Luger) or take cover in a specific spot. You rarely have to use this, but it can be very helpful to have them distract certain enemies while you flank for an easy kill.

And those kills can be made even easier if you opt to gather the optional collectibles or attempt the various side-challenges which unlock as you play through the campaign. The collectibles themselves are fairly straight forward, each level has a set amount of cold hard CA$H hidden within it in the form of suitcases that are tucked away in wooden crates. As you gather more of them, your total funding increases and more weapons unlock alongside upgraded versions of those weapons should you earn enough. You don’t need to dip into your funding to unlock new weapons or upgrades as they’re unlocked automatically once you’ve reached a certain level of funding. As for the side-challenges, these provide “points” which are used in a similar manner to unlock various abilities such as the ability to hold extra grenades or to have double the amount of HP. These abilities can be very powerful, although your first playthrough of the campaign will be relatively normal as you can only gain these points through challenges which are tied to clearing each act of the campaign. As such you’ll need to have cleared most of the acts to unlock the most overpowered abilities.

And once you’ve cleared most the acts, the game has a few more bits and pieces of content with which to incentivise you to keep playing. Unfortunately the multiplayer servers and community don’t really exist anymore, so the multiplayer mode isn’t much of a draw these days. To my knowledge you will still be able to take part in local co-op though, presuming you can find someone else with a PSP and a copy of the game. This will let you play through any missions you’ve completed in the single player campaign, but with a buddy. Of course both of these modes are still a factor if you pick up the remaster (which is “free” on PS+ platinum) so those looking for the most content might want to take a look at that version. For everyone else, you’ve got the Jukebox to enjoy the OST, the collectibles mentioned above and uh… that’s about it. Therein lies the flaw with the bold new online age that the 7th console generation (and to a lesser extent the 6th) ushered in, namely that a lot of Killzone: Liberation content just doesn’t work any-more. You can’t get the last act of the game (and there are only 4 in the release version), you can’t play online and co-op is more tricky to utilise. As such those of you who stumble upon the game at a very low price for the original PSP version are advised that you’ll be missing a good chunk of the game. Fortunately what’s there is still great and I’d recommend it to any player looking for a challenge, but be aware that you’re not getting the full experience as the developers had intended.

To conclude, Killzone: Liberation is a fun but challenging Isometric cover-art shooter that is a great showcase of what the PSP is capable of. While many of these capabilities have died out, what remains is a visually impressive and faithful adaption of the Killzone series to a handheld system. There are myriad enemies and features contained within the single player experience, and between the (admittedly short) campaign, the collectibles and the challenge modes there is still a healthy amount of content on offer. No doubt the best experience would be to play the remaster, but to my knowledge you can’t own that on disc so as the industry marches on that version of the game will be lost to time. For those of you who don’t own a PS4/PS5 and a PS+ subscription, I would have no issues recommending the base game with one important caveat – this game can be unforgiving and you should be prepared for a short but brutal campaign.

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Quick Note: As it’s 2023, I’m assuming that you know how Oblivion plays so I’m only touching on what’s in the content pack. If you don’t know how Oblivion plays, then it’s very similar to Skyrim. If you don’t know how either of those games play, then go play one of them (I think Oblivion is better, but it’s jankier).

Much like Knights of the Nine which I looked at last week, The Shivering Isles has an innocuous start that belies the sheer scale of content available once it’s been installed. Initially nothing changes within the land of Cyrodiil aside for the fact that you gain a quest which mentions that a gate has opened on an island in the Niben Bay just to the east of Bravil. Upon travelling there, you’ll find a guard dealing with the demented riff-raff that are occasionally spewed out after their visit to the Madgod’s realm turns them, well, stark-raving MAD. You’re then given the choice of entering this realm, or not playing through the content you’ve paid for, so you enter the gate. Once you do so, you’re then asked again by the Madgod’s custodian as to whether you really want to play through the expansion content, before agreeing and getting dumped into the mandatory tutorial section Fringe. This area is locked off from the rest of the Shivering Isles by a large wall with only 1 entrance/exit in the form of the Gates of Madness which are guarded by the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper is a big, tough monster who you see slaughtering a party of adventurers, so your character has to figure out a way to get past it without getting wrecked.

This opens up the first of many quests in The Shivering Isles which are largely linear (and often quite similar) but which do provide some ability to roleplay as there are often multiple different ways to achieve the same goal. In this instance, you’re able to decide how to fight the Gatekeeper and there are 2 main methods of doing so. You can either team up with a maniac hunter who’s obsessed with bones and help him break into a graveyard to gather arrows that are made to be highly effective against the gatekeeper, or you can grill the assistant of the Gatekeeper’s creator to find out his weakness, then gather a poison that you can apply to your weapon which is highly effective against the gatekeeper. In both cases you’re basically doing the same thing (i.e. making your weapon better against the gatekeeper so you don’t get beaten like a drum), but the way you do it is slightly different. For the former method, you need to do a bit of lockpicking but you do get a temporary companion whereas the latter method requires some speechcraft and sneaking. I personally did both and then realised that neither does much for hand-to-hand or mage builds, so I tanked the gatekeeper while my maniac hunter ally did the real damage. After the gatekeeper goes down, the real meat of this expansion pack begins.

Now unlike KotN, the sheer amount of quest content in this expansion means that it’s not feasible to go through the main plot line without turning this review into a modest novella. Suffice it to say, once you get the gates you have the option of running through the north of island, which is the realm of mania or going along the south of the island, which is the realm of dementia. As this expansion pack revolves around Sheogorath, everything is infused with the two-faced nature of the god of madness and as a consequence most of the content is split between these two aspects of his personality – the joyfully manic and the resentfully morose. There are therefore 2 sides to the island, two sections of the main settlement (Bliss and The Crucible), two groups of guards, two main groups of heretic humanoid NPCs, two rulers in the city and so on. Ultimately everything and everyone aside from Sheogorath belongs to one side or the other, with the Madgod himself being split right down the middle and even his manner of speaking veers from one side of his personality to the other. The manic side is brightly coloured, ecstatically upbeat, utterly insane and either very friendly or very dangerous (often both) resulting in garish areas and clothing. On the flipside, the demented areas are grim in both appearance and demeanour, riddled with paranoia and also very dangerous.

You’ll have plenty of time to get familiar with both sides of the Madgods split personality however, as regardless of your choices you’ll need to complete a series of quests which involve familiarising yourself with both sides of this baffling realm. You’ll need to learn what addiction feels like from the Duke of mania, then take part in an investigation to find plotters amongst the demented (which lets you have everyone tortured which is pretty funny). You’ll need to work with both sides of the guards, who are represented by the Dark Seducers (demented) and the Golden Saints as they fight the threats to the Shivering Isles (and each other). Finally you’ll need to explore both Mania and Dementia in depth as most quests require you to leave the city (cities?) and get trekking through the island to fight through various dungeons so that you can gradually work your way through the main questline. As mentioned earlier, a lot of these quests are relatively repetitive as most involve going to a dungeon, fighting your way through it and then rescuing someone or obtaining an item that you need. Then again, it does feel somewhat unfair to ding this expansion for having a lot of similar content as it almost always has a twist to the format or gives you the ability to resolve the mission in a slightly different way.

To give some examples of this, while doing the quest for the Duke of Mania you’re tasked with fighting your way through a dungeon but you need to keep gathering an alchemical ingredient otherwise you’ll be brutalised by withdrawal symptoms that are extremely severe. While rebuilding the gatekeeper, you’re tasked with clearing through a dungeon but get to choose which body parts the new gatekeeper will have, which is a nice bit of legacy building (not that your choices really matter). While setting up a distraction for unwanted adventures, you’ll need to clear out a dungeon that serves as an elaborate mousetrap but get to mess with a trio of adventurers at the end with a series of traps. Yet despite these little twists, most quests really do just boil down to going to a dungeon, killing the baddies and then proceeding to the next step. There aren’t many quests in the main mission that break free of this mould, and even when they do you’re often only being given a mandatory stealth section. The only two that are really different is the mission to find the plotters who are threatening the duchess of dementia and the aforementioned quests where you get to activate traps on an adventuring party (which is basically just pressing 3 buttons). There is also a mission where you have to favour one faction of the guards against another, but this is basically just a big fight with a lot of NPCs running around and focusing on each other while you help sway the balance.

So if you’ve made it this far and are getting the impression that I found a lot of these quests a little underwhelming, you’ll probably be wondering why I recommend this expansion pack so much? Well there are three main reasons I think you’d be remiss for skipping this one. Firstly, the areas and NPCs within them are quite amusing and visually impressive with each NPC being delusion al in a fun way while the zones and island itself are often beautiful to look at (within the limits of Oblivion’s graphical fidelity of course). Secondly the new items, spells and rewards are all well worth it and make it possible to make overpowered characters – as an example of this by the end you get the ability to summon three different powerful NPCs as allies for 120 seconds at a time. Finally the roleplaying potential of what’s contained within this expansion is quite potent, and you even get the ability to change the weather of the Shivering Isles once you’ve cleared the main story. There’s a lot of cool content here, especially the dialogue, but unfortunately it is let down slightly by the repetitive quest design. I actually thought that Knights of the Nine did a better job of varying things, as most dungeons only have a handful of different enemies and so you’ll be fighting the same enemies time-after-time-after-time. My suggestion would therefore be to enjoy the expansion for what it is, and try not to rush yourself as you will otherwise find the plot’s annoying habit of but wait, there’s more! to be extremely tedious. Perhaps fittingly for the realm of an insane daedric prince, nothing is ever simple and you will always be given just one more task until everything resolves itself in a twist ending involving the daedric prince of order, Jyggalag.

As for Jyggalag, he doesn’t make much of an appearance throughout the main plot but he is the primary antagonist and is the reason why you’ve been brought to the Shivering Isles in the first place. Essentially Sheogorath needs a champion who will help him withstand the “Greytide” which involves the minions of order destroying his charming realm of insanity under their dull, grey bootheels. The knights and priests of order are therefore recurring enemies and they can appear within the realm of the Shivering Isles in much the same way as gates of oblivion appeared within Cyrodiil, the only difference is that you can’t enter the crystals that spawn these enemies and must instead use 3 hearts of order to overload and thus close them. Unfortunately the forces of order aren’t particularly varied and as such they contribute to the feeling of repetition which sadly accompanies many of these quests. When you first encounter them, they’re pretty scary but by the end they feel like the bandits and highwaymen that plagued the roads and campsites of Oblivion.

But again, it feels remiss to whine about the main quest too much as there is a lot of content there (14 quests not counting the occasional ways in which they branch for future playthroughs) alongside roughly 20 side quests. There are also a lot of handy treasures scattered around, including water breathing helmets and other magical items alongside some new dungeons to fight through. Just be aware that some enemies in this expansion can inflict quasi-permanent debuffs to your main stats (like Strength, Endurance and so on) which will need to be cured with relatively expensive and rare potions. Just be sure to talk to everyone and you’ll get a healthy dose of the madness that surrounds this land like a fog, and be secure in the knowledge that once you clear through the main quest you’ll have gained a bunch of powerful items and spells. As such I’d say that this expansion is really about the new world and it’s inhabitants rather than the quests, which can be monotonous. To give some examples (I’ve been saying this a lot in this review huh?) you’ve got two competing blacksmiths in Bliss and The Crucible who get upset when you talk to the other one and who both offer the ability to turn new materials into unique sets of armour (Amber for light armour and Madness Ore for heavy armour) and weapons. There are two museums of curios, although only the one in The Crucible has a quest chain attached to it although the owner of the other one will ask if they can put you in suspended animation (no you can’t accept his humble request). And finally as you climb the ranks of this strange new realm, you’ll be constantly in touch with Sheogorath himself who veers constantly between manic merriment and demented irritance. He’s without a doubt the star of the show, and the way in which he makes you rile-up his man servant by constantly summoning him repeatedly is just one of the ways in which he makes the main narrative more amusing than it otherwise has any right to be.

To wrap up, The Shivering Isles is an expansion with a ton of content and character that gives you some very powerful gear, spells and summons. The quests themselves often give you a variety of options in how to proceed, but sadly are often just doing the same thing (i.e. killing everyone in a dungeon) which undermines the expansion a bit. Fortunately enough the dialogue and characters do a good job of keeping things lively and the new areas are visually impressive and contain plenty of attention to detail in spite of the relatively modest size of the expansion which clocks in at under 1GB. Ultimately the Shivering Isles is a meaty expansion pack that offers a lot for existing characters and for players who are able to enjoy the bizarre new realm that’s on offer. Those who are merely looking to push through the main quest line and who aren’t going to engage with the new zones, dialogue or characters will probably be a little underwhelmed but I think most RPG players will be satisfied with what’s on offer here. As a result I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to Oblivion fans, although I would recommend that they pace themselves and stop to smell the roses giant mushrooms along the way.

The post Oblivion: The Shivering Isles appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: As it’s 2023, I’m assuming that you know how Oblivion plays so I’m only touching on what’s in the content pack. If you don’t know how Oblivion plays, then it’s very similar to Skyrim. If you don’t know how either of those games play, then go play one of them (I think Oblivion is better, but it’s jankier).

KotN has a fairly innocuous opening, as your character hears about a prophet appearing in the town of Anvil who is prophesying about the end of the world. This adds yet another quest to your journal, and until you go there the game world proceeds as normal without any trouble. Once you get to Anvil, everyone’s gossiping about an attack on the Cathedral which has been ransacked and is full of corpses. On talking to the prophet, he tells you about the heroic crusade of myth Pelinal Whitestrake who struck down an Evil elvish lord called Umaril in days long past. It turns out Pelinal left the job half done however, as evil in the form of Umaril has returned and has murdered everyone in Anvil’s Cathedral to prove it. As such your selfless (or selfish, depending on your playstyle) adventurer is tasked with gathering up all the pieces of Pelinal’s old equipment, which have obtained relic status. Then by using them, you’ll be able to finish his job for him by defeating Umaril. To do this, you’ll need to gain the help of Nine Divines by praying at each of their 9 wayshrines which are scattered across Cyrodil.

As you can see from the map above, most of these shrines are either next to a town or are at least near a road. This makes finding them somewhat straightforward, but as I started a new character to play through this DLC (say what you like about Oblivion’s level scaling, but it at least makes this possible) the adventure of finding these shrines amidst the realm of Cyrodil was in and of itself a fun little adventure. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that all of the relics scale with your level however, so if you want the best versions you should either be level 21+ or download a mod that scales them to your level. Once you’ve tracked down each shrine and said a prayer, three things happen. Firstly your Infamy points are reset as this questline is only available to “good” adventurers, which means it can be useful for any remorseful vampires, thieves guild or dark brotherhood members. Secondly, it lets you player pray at these wayshrines going forward so that you can gain temporary buffs should you happen upon them again. Thirdly and finally, it advances the quest to the next stage where you get a vision from the big man Pelinal himself. This vision is pretty cool, as it thrusts your character up into the sky where ghostly Pelinal talks some shit about Umaril before he gives you the location of his own erstwhile resting place.

You’re then sent to a submerged ruin which fortunately is largely indoors, as otherwise you’d need to bring a lot of water-breathing potions or have decided to play as an Argonian. While fighting your way through, you come across the remains of one of the Knights of the Nine who was kind enough to be bearing a note that confirms that Pelinal’s bitchin’ helmet is located in this tomb, and that there was a group of Knights/Treasure hunters who were looking for the rest of the relics. Once you’ve yoinked the helmet, you then head to the abandoned priory that served as their base to hunt for clues Scooby Doo style. This turns out to be an apt comparison as the (hidden) basement is clustered with the semi-friendly ghosts of each of the fallen knights. As is typical for knightly fables, they’re polite enough but ask you to prove your worth by beating them up in a sequence of one-on-one fights. This section is pretty cool and while it sounds overwhelming, they’re not too tough (they failed after all) and you have a little bit of time to heal between each duel.

After proving that you are a certified BADASS (sorry, I played through all the Borderlands 2 DLC before playing this) you can then talk to all of the Knights and they tell you where various pieces of Pelinal’s equipment have ended up. Most of these quests are short but sweet and each have their own gimmicks, which I won’t spoil too much. Without giving much away, I’d recommend doing the Gauntlets last and say that you should do the Boots (which require a bit of thinking) before trying for the Mace. The Shield is by far the meatiest of these quests as it requires you to clear out a fort full of hostile Conjurers, who are fairly frail but who can cause you problems if you decided to play with an unarmed melee build like my rotund roleplaying ass. There are also some light puzzles contained within this quest, but they’re all pretty easy so long as you got enough oxygen in the womb. The only issue I had was due to a bug where the rotating statues didn’t appear to rotate (so having them all face the right way was really, really hard). If this happens to you, then you can try restarting the game which fixed it for me – or you can use the console commands to skip to the next stage. Once your questing is done you’ll have obtained almost all of the relics and can now head back to the Priory to brag tell your ghostly gang that you’re making good progress.

Upon your triumphant return your character is greeted by a priory that now has friendly NPCs and which has been spruced up so that it no longer looks abandoned. It’s somewhat jarring, but it turns out an NPC you freed while hunting for the shield rocked on up and brought some friends with him. Fortunately enough, one of these guys was smart enough to bring you one of the two remaining relics and knows where the last one is. The only problem? It’s been using by an evil wraith (is there any other kind?) who is related to the original Knights of the Nine falling apart in the first place. You’re then asked whether you want this helpful chap to become a member of your new, cooler Knights of the Nine. You can turn him down, but I don’t know why you would especially as he (temporarily) becomes your companion and peppers the corpses of everyone you fight with Silver Arrows that you can then sell later for free money. Once you’ve resolved this intense moral dilemma, you’re then tasked with killing the wraith and stealing his sword so that you can complete your relic collection. You’ll also need to take it to a Cathedral so it’ll stop being an evil sword, but that’s a pretty modest ordeal compared to most of the other stuff you’ve been dealing with.

With your collection of relics at 100%, the Prophet and a bunch of aspirant knights show up at your priory to give/listen to a speech respectively. Once the Prophet is done with his pep talk, he tells you that you must all go to Umaril’s new house and kick his cunt in end the threat that he poses to the Nine Divines and all the mortal inhabitants of the world. Three randoms and a guy from the Gauntlets quest then ask you if you’ll let them join your suicide righteous mission, which is a no brainer if ever there was one. By this point you should have 8 knights willing to sally forth with you, unless you told them all to go pound sand because you’re roleplaying angry, angry Pelinal. They’ll all then patiently wait for you at Umaril’s base while you go sell your loot to merchants there with all due speed. Once you’re there, you all charge forth into battle against small groups of enemies who get absolutely battered from all sides

During your heroic assault you’ll slaughter a bunch of enemies before eventually needing to split off from the group because the baddies keep respawning. As per the rest of the battle, my character resolved this issue by punching the obstacle – in this case a big glowing orb which exploded and then caused everyone except Umaril and two of his lackies to disappear. If you’ve got all of the relics equipped, Umaril himself is a very easy fight as you gain a powerful buff that drains most of his stats when you hit him. One thing that’s worth noting is that his sword also scales with your character’s level (the best version requires you to be level 24 or higher) and that you have to loot it while he’s in his physical form. Once you’ve bullied him avenged Pelinal you then need to cast a spell which teleports you to his very soul, at which point you beat him up again before there’s an explosion. An explosion so powerful in fact that it caused my game to crash, necessitating me to redo most of the mission again (thanks Todd). Fortunately Umaril wasn’t allowed to escape death a fourth time, so upon beating him again again again again my heroic character was returned to the Priory for congratulations and a slight sense of anti-climax as all my comrades in arms proceeded to walk right past me back indoors after 10 seconds of cheering. But this is a Bethesda game so that kind of abrupt tonal shift is par for the course. I then returned my relics to the armoury and went back to my humble life as a pilfering, boxing Khajiit.

Once you’ve wrapped up the questline in KotN there’s not too much left to do, nor much that has changed within Cyrodil itself. You’ve now got a cool new priory base and some new equipment that conveys various permanent buffs (aside from being enchanted) but otherwise KotN doesn’t add much. There are the new areas that you’ve fought through and some new valuable books added to the loot tables, plus the ability to gain a blessing from one of the old Knights that you’ve redeemed by completing their quest. You’ll also have gained a handful of new spells but that’s about it. As such this quest is about the journey, not the destination and while it’s fun to playthrough the storyline it’s a one-and-done affair. One last thing to note is that you need to retain your low infamy to be able to use the various relics that you’ve gathered across your crusade, as once you hit an Infamy value of two or more you can’t use them (and NPCs will sass you) until you go to each of the 9 wayshrines again.

In conclusion, KotN is a fun mini-expansion / DLC that doesn’t offer too much outside of it’s quest chain but does provide a fun series of quests for you to enjoy at any level. While the re-establishment of the Knights of the Nine does feel a little bit rushed, the quests themselves offer enough of a variety that I’m willing to let this slide. Admittedly once you’re finished with these quests the DLC kind of ends, but the new gear and spells are great while the new buffs and base are appreciated even if they won’t radically change your playstyle. Ultimately KotN is a memorable and fun quest-line with some good rewards (and an easy way to reset your Infamy points should you need it) that offers great value for returning players or those who’ve already beaten the main storyline. It’s not essential, but I’d highly recommend that any fan of Oblivion play through it – especially as it’s included with the modern versions of Oblivion that are available for sale.

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Quick Note: While I did play the original DS version back in the day, this review is based on my recent play-through of the remastered version which came out in 2017 for PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One.

Before diving into what makes Lock’s Quest such an interesting game, I’d just like to give credit where credit is due for the fact that THQ Nordic had the sheer balls to consider it for a full fledged port. Not only did it only receive modest success upon it’s initial release for the Nintendo DS (with it’s 81% rating on Metacritic sadly converting to below 100,000 units sold worldwide according to VGChartz), but the entire game is designed with touch screen controls in mind and obviously these had to be entirely reworked for the game to be playable. Even once the controls were totally reworked, most of the game’s assets including character portraits, unit and turret sprites and the soundtrack then had to be rebuilt for platforms with considerably higher display resolutions and standards. Now it’s true that there were some cutbacks, including the loss of multiple levels and the game’s multiplayer mode. Yet almost a decade after the game’s initial release, THQ gave it a second shot and I’m personally grateful that they did.

The reason for my gratitude is simple, Lock’s Quest is a pretty unique game and it’s combination of tower defence and active offence make it an enjoyable experience. The game itself is split up into 74 days, each of which functions as a level although these levels are played across a smaller range of maps. The way it works is simple, the game will load up a new map and then you’ll be tasked with defending it for multiple in-game days with each day being represented by a time limit (generally 3 minutes but occasionally longer). Before a day starts, you get 2 or 3 minutes with which to setup your defences, which take the form of a variety of turrets, walls, traps and occasionally AI human defenders. Walls are critical as not only do they keep the bad guys at bay, but they also link up with turrets and give them a defensive bonus which vastly increases the amount of HP your connecting turrets have. Therefore a large amount of the game’s strategy involves juggling the offensive power of your turrets (and the types of enemies they can engage) while building enough walls to ensure these turrets don’t melt while you’re distracted.

And you will be distracted! Lock’s Quest starts off gently and initially seems pretty straight forward as you only have a handful of wall lengths, turrets and traps that can be used against a small amount of different enemy types. Alongside these defensive buildings, you also have the ability to attack enemies yourself and will soon be able to build up a power meter which can be unleashed in the form of powerful abilities. A significant part of the game is balancing the need to repair your structures, attack enemies yourself and keep an eye on your health. If you don’t repair your buildings, they’ll be destroyed and you’ll need to use a significant amount of your limited resources to rebuild them. If you don’t attack the enemies, you won’t build up your power meter and you’ll really struggle to churn through the enemy waves before they can build up a critical mass. If you don’t keep your eye on your health, well… I think you can guess why that’s an issue!

As Lock’s Quest progresses, juggling defence, offence and Lock’s mortality continues to become more complex as the game continually ramps up. Each new map consistently introduces new enemies, abilities, defensive structures and ways that you can attack. By the late game, you’ll have 4 different wall strengths (with different costs), multiple utility turrets that give certain buffs, multiple turret types with have different ranges which counter nearly a dozen different enemy types and a wide variety of attacks and abilities that Lock can use. Oh and did I mention that the game likes to mix things up even further with boss battles, or the occasional need to conduct an offensive mission (such as sallying forth to clear enemy camps while under attack or reach a certain part of the map to complete an objective)?

In spite of the ever developing complexity on paper however, I actually felt that Lock’s Quest was most challenging earlier on. As mentioned previously you only have a limited amount of currency, called source in the game, which means you can’t have too many turrets at once. Due to this you need to be quite careful with your positioning, as maps have plenty of obstacles that make forming a nice neat-and-tidy line tricky. In addition, most maps have multiple routes that the enemy can take and so you’ll often need to split your defences between multiple angles which further makes things difficult. Fortunately Lock is no slouch and can deal significant damage to enemies himself which helps you finesse this challenge. The reason the game’s balance is a bit wonky however is that initially his abilities are so limited that he often needs to venture forth and then retreat so that his health can regenerate. Due to this you’re very dependent on your turrets to provide you with some shelter and so you are constantly bouncing between attacking enemies and repairing turrets while you’re regenerating health. Around halfway through the game however Lock gains a health-steal attack which funnels health from the enemy to Lock for a period of time, and from this point onwards HP management becomes much, much easier even as the enemies you face continue to increase their health and damage output. Not only does the health-steal attack give you the ability to stay in the fight longer, but if you hit multiple enemies you’ll continue to steal health from each of them while building up your power meter. This not only enables you to use your powerful abilities more frequently, but while you’re using them you can’t be hurt and so you will regenerate your health… which then lets you continue to attack the enemies!

As such I found that I didn’t really die after a certain point and only enemy attack routes I failed to foresee caused me any trouble. Don’t worry, the game wasn’t a cakewalk and there were still some close calls but generally the difficulty actually decreases as the game goes on. Fortunately it’s around this point that the game’s plot really starts to pick up from a relatively slow start and there are multiple twists and turns that belie the humble beginnings that Lock (and his perennially cute sister Emi) find themselves in. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say that some of the twists come out of nowhere and the whole thing is surprisingly engaging even if it does have that slightly twee vibe that is more associated with Japanese games. To give a basic idea of what I mean, Lock and Emi are orphans who live in a quaint, peaceful village that gets attacked by the evil robot army. Lock gradually becomes the ultimate Archineer (as the game calls those who can build defences) and realises that there’s a sinister backstory involving his family that ultimately culminates in him becoming a hero so that he can save his sister and the world. Again at a basic level it’s not particularly high brow, but it is a fun little adventure and it helps justify a few unique scenarios that give the game some memorable moments.

These memorable moments culminate in a great series of final levels that really pull the game together and provide a decent amount of challenge. My personal pro-tip for these is that you have enough resources to spam traps, so you should build a thicc wall of cannon turrets with a healthy dose of traps everywhere, while using the health-steal attack and alternating between the power that lets you repair everything and the standard lightning power. Just be careful as the true final boss hits like a freight train and can phase through your walls!

Finally once Lock’s Quest has wrapped up, you’re treated to a cute series of cutscenes that are slightly vague before being left back at the main menu. At this point you can either play-through it all again, or engage in the additional defence mode. Unfortunately the multiplayer aspect of the DS original didn’t get carried over, but fortunately the defence mode itself provides an extra bit of challenge to help bolster the game’s modest playtime. Essentially you are tasked with defending the city map that re-occurs at multiple points throughout the main campaign, but this time there is no respite! Instead you must fight wave-after-wave-after-wave of the enemy with every third wave including a boss. As always, resources are very limited and the meagre amount of incoming source means that losing turrets is a massive pain in the backside. Those seeking to achieve 100% completion will need to clear 10 waves, which includes 3 boss fights and as such this mode adds a dollop of extra content to what is otherwise a fairly short game. For context, clearing through the campaign took me around 9 hours on the normal difficulty setting.

In conclusion, Lock’s Quest is the epitome of short but sweet as the game contains a large amount of content and plenty of heart for a modest price tag. While there are issues with path finding (both yours and the enemies), some instances of slowdown and a plot that starts off slow the game is ultimately rewarding and has it’s own unique gameplay style. If you were one of the approximately 8 billion people who missed this game on it’s first release, then I would strongly recommend picking it up.

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