2015. Júl. 2.

I never was a big fan of XCOM. I haven’t got the faintest idea why, because basically I like all the SF sub-genres, the tactics and the turn-based combat. The XCOM-series simply did not catch me, even if I know it got famous by its own rights. But, when some years ago news and first trailers got published about a TPS-TBT XCOM, I felt I wouldn’t be disinterested. And I was not. In this form XCOM perfectly fits for me. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (in short: The Bureau) finely gives you one of my favorite settings; the atom-scared years of cold war, when Russians are blamed for every attack on the USA, even if it is squarely alien by origin. The setting of The Bureau is a post-apocalyptic 60s, but there are no wastelands yet, because you can watch the process of destruction. Or not the process, rather the destruction itself, caused by an abruptly attacking extraterrestrial army. In this environment you play the great adventure of the uncharacteristically named veteran special agent of the CIA, William Carter. By controlling him you exterminate the aliens, collect their technology, give commands to the companions, and discover the secret behind the power leading the extraterrestrials. Okay, summarized this way The Bureau seems not a big deal, but it is a fine tactical shooter, and has an overwhelming atmosphere, in spite of the story being strongly average. Some says the AI of the teammates is very weak, but it seemed to me that I saw people disoriented by the chaos of the battle, doing the best they can in this state. This is the point of leading a team: The boss (namely YOU, the player) can reason the battlefield, estimate the situation, and find solutions by active, proactive or defensive reactions. The others are doing as ordered, or the team falls apart. The definition of “tactical game” includes the fact that your companions are dead without your commands. If they would be independent, there would be no need for tactics, because the AI would solve the situations without you. Maybe I am too protective of this game, even if I must admit that its story is not...

2014. nov. 13.

The world of Warhammer 40.000 was made up of incredibly hard, cold and factual elements. Creators of Space Marine got this well, and they spiced the stuff with the marine heroism you can see on numberless pictures painted for the tabletop game. The result is among those very few games to which I tend to give maximal droidscore. Maybe, till now there was no such game in GD’s history. WH40K setting is extremely gothic, cosmic and apocalyptic, desperately dark, fantastic and hopeless in the same time, so in short: it’s not simple. Sometimes it called dystopian science fantasy, and this shows well that it’s not classifiable, so a distinct category was made. The name is telling: We are in the 41st millennium, when humans already populated the galaxy. During doing this it met some things, for example the Ork race spreading like a plague, or the Eldars living on their so-called Craftworlds after they left their home planets which (literally) became the embodiment of the race’s most chaotic nightmare. Anyway, they are not the real problem here, but the warping forces of Chaos and the swarm-like Tyranids are. There are other races too, and every one of them would fill a whole book, so I stick to the basics here. As in countless other settings, human is the average race here. They have high level technology but only some weaker psi abilities, and in spite of maintaining a strict order they always lie under the lure of Chaos. The Emperor’s Children Legion is a fine example here: They was so addicted to the sensations of battle and victory that they fell to Slaanesh, the Chaos god of perverse pleasures. Humankind is a so-called “collector-race” by every means: It mixes Orkish ferocity, Eldar technology and the unpredictability of Chaos. Orks are green-skinned, violent neo-barbarians. They live by wolfish laws and believe war can solve every problem. Although they are in constant war with other races, there are frequent skirmishes even between the allied clans, be it a simple bar brawl, a battle for an area or even a holy war. They practically have no fear of death, and we can hear about artfully wrought ork...

2014. nov. 12.

Generally I like crossovers in every area, because if the creators are combining the elements of various genres well, the mix can be something good, even if the product shows no really new or unique content in the depths. Since the re-adoptation of Blood Bowl the name of the french Cyanide started to be the synonym of quality entertainment, and the fine-tuned crossover of Of Orcs and Men wrote it onto the list of companies drawing attention. Even the title grabbed my attention, because it refers to Steinbeck‘s Of Mice and Men, and the similarity goes further. We get the small and agile character as well as the slow giant, and there is a sentence in the synopsis of the book that fits well on this very game: “…clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.” The trailers bought me with the story: Humans wage total war against the greenskins, a part of the orc race is already eradicated, and the other part is mostly enslaved. But humans did not take an important thing into account: The orcs seem wild, unorganized and barbaric on the outside, but in fact they have an advanced culture with mostly strength-based but solidly contoured power hierarchy in it. And, you know, they have an elite squad. These elites are the Bloodjaws, and have a jaw tattoo on the right breast – and of course the main hero, Arkail is a part of the team. You get the mission summarized in a very orcish way: Get through the wall, search and kill the emperor! Really, this is it. But the completion is much more difficult than the summary of the mission. The first and most important thing: They hire a guide for you to lead you through the city wall. He is no other than Styx, the only goblin in the world ever heard speaking and ever showed signs of intelligence. Not to mention, he is the narrator of the story and swearing is not far from him. So that’s it, you have the odd couple, and their only mutual attribute is their green skin. The differences would make an enormous list, so I stick to the essentials....

Don’t misunderstand it: “Minority report” is never about bad games. Rather it’s about enjoyable games full of flaws which, by well intentions, can be looked over during playing, but on the whole they bring the global impression about the game down. They are “ok, but…” and “I liked it, but…” types of flaws. And there is another important thing: I don’t choose games for writing minority reports because they are favorites of one or other editor of GameDroid. Of course, my favorites can be subjects of articles like this. What’s more, I would gladly read that if someone would point at the lacks and misses I didn’t see. Effect of the Masses Here, on GameDroid I already lamented about the situation of CRPGs today, and I emphasized the genre-destroying works of BioWare when they qualify their excellent action-adventure games as RPGs, in which genre these otherwise outstanding games can be only weak flicks. I was also screaming in the past when they called Mass Effect 1 a CRPG, because the running-in-tubes-shooting gameplay and the unimpressionable story contradict the labeling too much. Then Mass Effect 2 came to the shops as one of the main representatives of the genre – although, as some refinement it is often called action-RPG or shooter-RPG. For me, it remains an action-adventure game, and with this I consider the labeling topic closed. Besides being a gamer and liking adventure games I was interested in ME2 also because not only the faceless masses, but some of my friends too speak about it in superlatives. So marketing worked well: The masses drew the attention of my friends, and their opinion drew mine too. Chief Miner Let’s have a go at this: Mining is the lamest among the many legs of Mass Effect 2. Not just it eats up half or even quarter fifth of your playtime (it depends on you being exhaustive or not), but there are some major inconsequences in it. It can be seen with half an eye that you are the only miner in the galaxy. Half of the planets have rich deposits which can be depleted completely – in the same time, on a few planets there are...