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I played around with Mr. Robot a few weeks ago. Initially, it was quite appealing even though I couldn’t quite explain why.

Mr. Robot is a pretty straightforward mix of SNES-era console-RPG style turn based battles and platforming that emphasizes box puzzles.  The sci-fi wrapper is probably the most appealing part, and it’s chock full of references. However, I haven’t felt compelled to finish the game even though it appears to be pretty short.

I had quite a bit of fun at the start of the game when I was sorely outmatched fighting battles that I was supposed to avoid before I had an actual party. Making progress took a lot of effort and I was constantly walking on the wire, always on the brink of death. Resource management was really important, because if I screwed up I was going to end up burning more heals than I could afford to purchase. The problem I ran into is that the level curve is too shallow. Once I got a party member (and a healer at that), the game became really easy. I found out I was one level away from max in one of the two types of levels that progress simultaneously.

As I progressed through the game, my party got stronger… but the fights really didn’t get harder. The “tough” guys that I was fighting alone at level 1 are the common guys for my full, high-level party. It’s only introduced a single tier of new enemies that entire time, and those aren’t that much stronger. This creates a dreary feeling of monotony, as every fight is the same (and trivially easy). If there was more variety and growth in the enemies then I’d probably have finished the game by now.

I’ve started messing around in Space Rangers 2 again. It’s a fun turn-based space game in the vein of Elite and Privateer. It has a mash up of all sorts of different types of gameplay, ranging from the traditional fighting and trading to RTS (not the game’s strength) and text-based adventures.

For example, my new, severely outmatched pirate had to land on a hostile planet to escape a pursuing bounty hunter. Once I landed, the authorities caught me and threw me in jail. I tried to make a break for it by starting a fight on the prison bus and overpowering a guard, but I only made it past a couple guards once I got my hands on a gun. I ended up in prison, where I spent time fighting, building up relations with different factions, conning people out of money and tricking the warden into thinking I was a rat. Ultimately, I used the equipment I conned out of the warden to escape from the prison after one month of my three month sentence.

I used my new found freedom to buy some new weapons for my ship, and head out searching for the bounty hunter that chased me into exile. Since I thought the weapons probably wouldn’t be enough, I assisted another pirate along the way by helping him fight off some patrolling ships. Once I did that, I used my new found favor to recruit him as my wingman at a reduced price, then I paid for information on where I could find that bounty hunter. My wingman and I chased him across three systems, took him out and sold off the parts from his wreckage.

That kind of interesting scenario is pretty common in Space Rangers 2. The prison scenario was a text-based adventure, and the rest came from the surrounding in-world events that got me caught in the first place.

I haven’t felt like spending the time on any of the more substantial posts I have waiting on the backburner, so I’ll tackle another simple one: game commentary!

In my current quest to seek out more obscure (at least to me) games, Jets ‘n’ Guns is one of my most recent conquests. The title really says it all: it’s a side-scrolling game where you fly jets and you have lots of guns. Everything you destroy is worth points, which turns into money that you can use to buy and upgrade ships and guns. It’s a challenging game, and it’s simplistically absurd fun.

There’s a lot of content in for a small game, and it constantly compelled me to devour content to get new stuff.  Aside from solid side-scrolling shooter gameplay, it sure doesn’t hurt that Jets ‘n’ Guns has the coolest arsenal of guns this side of Ratchet & Clank. I was particularly fond of the gun that shoots a chessboard-like hexagon, the one that launches groups of flying, target-seeking zombie skulls and the one that creates a vortex on each side of you and pulls bullets towards you, so that it can hit enemies from behind.

It only played in 640×480 resolution, but it actually looked pretty good even though I had it stretched across my 1680×1050 widescreen. It’s a solid $20 purchase if you want some twitch-based gameplay.

Counters are cool, but I’ve never been fond of trump cards that require no skill or strategy to use. It leads to the situation where I win automatically because I have X and my opponent has Y. There’s no satisfaction to gain from a predetermined victory in a competitive game. Trumps cards are my second greatest complaint about the typical card-based strategy games. Insane costs are the first (thanks, Magic).

.. Which brings me back to Culdcept Saga, which has the advantage of charging you a reasonable one-time fee instead of asking you to sell your kidneys to be competitive. I’m pretty much at the end of the game now, and I’m starting to see quite a few cards come up that directly determine the outcome of the match. For example, in one especially big match I destroyed all 15 of my opponent’s lands in two turns. He had 9,000 points with a map goal of 12,000, and those two spells dropped him below 1,000.

Fortunately, Culdcept lets you disallow rare cards. Unfortunately, I have lots of cool-rare-but-not-overpowered cards. It’s a shame to have to remove all of those cards from play just to prevent a handful of cards that sap the fun. Regardless, I’ve had a great time playing Culdcept single player, co-op (yay!) and competitively.

The title pretty much says it all, although I’ll probably post in more detail once I’m farther in the game. I’ve been playing a lot of Culdcept Saga lately, and I find it incredibly fun. If you’re not familiar with Culdcept Saga, imagine mixing Monopoly and Magic the Gathering. It’s a board game (with tons of different maps) with a whole bunch of generic mana lands. You capture those lands by using creature cards, then you battle other players for control in a race to earn the most total mana (or money). Just like Monopoly, you have to pay a toll when you land on enemy lands - unless you capture the land with your creatures. Throw in an assortment of spells, items and a lot of creatures and it makes for some great multiplayer fun.

It’s particularly cool that you earn cards through multiplayer. Every map has a fixed number of cards that you get for winning, and you get fewer cards as you are lower in rank. For example, you might get 9 cards for first and 6 for second. Then you can play allied matches, so you can team up with friends and play against other teams or just plain AI opponents. It’s starting to cut into my sleep.

And it has nothing to do with the gameplay. I can deal with the various flaws and annoyances since I love 4X games, but I ran into something insurmountable. Playing a small game ran fine. Now that I’m deep into a large game, SEV brings my Athlon 4200+ 64 X2 w/ 3GB RAM to its knees unlike any other game I’ve played. Sure, I couldn’t run Crysis on high detail, but even that performs better than late-game SEV. I timed the load times of several common activities:

• Clicking the “Close” button after a battle to return to the map: 16 seconds
• Saving the game: 1 min 38 seconds
• Loading a save: 30 seconds
  • Clicking (NOT LOADING) a savegame in the load game menu: another 14 seconds
• Ending Turn: 4 minutes 3 seconds

My actual turn usually takes less than 2 minutes, and sometimes only 30 seconds.

I’ve been playing Space Empires V recently, and it’s really fun. It helps quench my thirst for a good 4X space game . I started on the series with Space Empires IV, and I liked it enough that I bought both the regular edition and the gold version when it came out later.

One of the coolest things about SEV is the way it handles data files. Just about everything in the game is in a text format that’s so simple than an idiot can parse it and mod the game. Whenever I’ve found something I don’t like in the game, within five minutes I had it fixed by either A) discovering there’s a preference to change or B) finding the data file and changing the values.