I’m a huge fan of games that have tactical combat. I’ve been playing these types of games since Ultima III, Ogre, and Pool of Radiance. But other than Dragon Age: Origins, I haven’t seen a game with good strategic combat in years.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics was released four years ago, in 2007. But having only recently picked up a PSP, I’m just coming around to it. The reviews weren’t great – the game has a metacritic score of 58% – but having now played the game for a bit, I’ve found that I enjoy it. The game is similar in many ways to the PC game Temple of Elemental Evil. Both are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset, and both allow you to control a group of characters in turn-based combat.

When creating my first party, I immediately went to my favorite two synergies. Firstly, a dual-classed sorcerer/monk. This would allow me to create a sorcerer who could cast shield and mage armor, and then dual class him into a monk, which would allow for a monk with an insanely high armor class. But as it turns out, there is no multiclassing in D&D Tactics. So I went for my other favorite: a fighter with a spiked chain and the whirlwind attack feat. The spiked chain is the only reach weapon in the game that can attack adjacent enemies. If you’re totally surrounded and make a whirlwind attack, you can theoretically attack 24 enemies in one turn. That has probably never happened in the history of the game – more realistic is attacking 4-5 enemies – but it’s a cool advantage to have. But as it turns out, neither the spiked chain nor the whirlwind attack feat exist in this game either. The ruleset in this PSP game is far more divergent from actual D&D 3.5 rules than was Temple of Elemental Evil. Nevertheless, I’m having fun with it.

After starting with a paladin-led party and getting stuck in the game’s fourth scenario, I restarted the game with a new party, taking care to have more toe-to-toe warriors and more characters with the heal skill. My new party consists of a high-dexterity dual-wielding fighter, a polearm-wielding orc barbarian, a monk, a cleric, a gnome sorcerer, and a dwarven psionic warrior with an insanely high armor class.

Creating these custom characters and micromanaging their inventories might be annoying for some people, but I enjoy it. It hearkens back to the old infinity engine games: Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. Good stuff.

Moving the party around environments between fights is sometimes annoying – I can completely understand the UI complaints of the game reviewers who bashed the game’s interface. Yes, it could have been better. But all-in-all, this is the kind of game I enjoy playing, and I foresee myself playing it to completion.

As I was kneeling in the sand, building my third epic sand castle in three days, turning my knees into hamburger, a thought came to me: Sand Castle Tower Defense would make a fantastic video game. It would require some fairly accurate water and sand physics. You could begin the game with only a cheapo shovel and plastic pail, and a single sea shell atop your lone tower. You’re given a single child and must assign him to build a wall around the tower and defend it from the incoming waves. As the game progresses, you earn better tools such as plastic cups to build extra towers, new seashells to place atop them, bigger shovels to dig deeper trenches, and more kids are drawn to your cause, giving you the means to multi-task and expand your sand castle domain. When the last seashell-bearing tower falls, your game is over and the kids go boogie boarding.

What? A one-button Real-Time Strategy game? How is that possible? Here it is. Meet Pax Brittanica. I’ve been playing this game on and off for a month now. Hold down the button to charge the circular meter. If you release it in the first quadrant, you build a fighter. In the second quadrant, a bomber, and in the third quadrant, a frigate. If you can defend yourself well enough to charge that meter to the fourth quadrant, you can upgrade your ship to charge the meter more quickly. Ships steer themselves. Enjoy.

Download Pax Brittanica

Pool of Radiance (1988)
I originally bought Pool of Radiance for my Commodore 64 because it was a Dungeons and Dragons game. Based on first edition “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons, it allowed you to create a party of Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics, and Thieves, and pit them against the kobolds and ogres in the city slums, and the skeletons and ghasts inhabiting Sokol Keep. The game was completely turn-based, and you could position your wall of fighters so as to line up your magic-user’s lightning bolt just right, or maneuver your thief into place for a x5 backstab. If you positioned a fireball just right, you could hit so many enemies that you’d have to sit and watch for nearly 2 minutes while the game reported everyone who was injured or killed. This was the first game I’d ever played that included truly tactical combat.

Wasteland (1988)
I didn’t play Wasteland until much later, but it took the semi-tactical combat of games like Ultima IV and V and combined it with the interface of the Bards Tale games. You got the “good graphics” (for the time) of the Bards Tale games, and at the same time you got the top-down view which allowed you to split up your party and move in your melee characters while keeping your gun-havers at a distance. It may not have been nearly as tactical a game as Pool of Radiance, but it was innovative for the time.

Baldur’s Gate (1998/2000)
Here’s the one that you knew was coming. Baldur’s Gate was the game that introduced the awesome “Infinity Engine”. I recently listened to a podcast interview with the guy from Bioware in which he discussed the origins of Baldur’s Gate. Twas awesome.

Baldur’s Gate originated the idea of creating a pseudo-turn-based game by allowing you to pause the action whenever you wanted. It also used 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, which included a huge number of races, character classes, and spells. This allowed you to create a huge variety of characters and institute tactics that included ranged weapons, backstabs, area effect spells, trap laying, and more.

Fallout Tactics (2001)
I didn’t buy Fallout Tactics right away. As a huge fan of the first two Fallout games, (which were based largely on the above-mentioned Wasteland) I’d heard that the story in Fallout Tactics wasn’t nearly what that of the first two games had been, and that made me sad. This is my sad face. When I finally picked up the game, I found that they’d added a lot of complexity to the actual combat system. Cover and partial cover, the ability to kneel or lie prone, and complex 3d line of sight mechanics were all in place. While you could play the game in real-time, the pseudo-turn-based gameplay is what really made the game great for me. It worked much like Fallout 3, using an action point system. Although the gameplay could be real-time or turn-based, the action points were the main factor in whether or not you could do something.

The environments and maps in the game’s various missions were a big part of what made the game great for me. I was a big fan of the sneak skill, and I’d use it to sneak forward, plant some landmines, and then sneak my sniper up to a really good vantage point where he’d lie prone and wait. Then I’d have a character with a shotgun sneak up as close to the enemies as possible, perhaps just on the other side of a sandbag wall or embankment. Then I’d have a character pop up and throw a grenade, have the shotgun guy pop up and fire point blank, and the sniper would start sniping. Fun!

Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)
Temple of Elemental Evil certainly had its issues. It shipped with a lot of bugs, and many of them were never fixed properly. But the actual combat engine was simply awesome. As a fan well-versed in the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ruleset, I found the options available for combat to be a playground. I could ready my archer so as to shoot at any enemy if he prepared to cast a spell, I could charge and get double movement for an attack, I could fight defensively for an armor class bonus, even make a five foot adjust so as to retreat without provoking attacks of opportunity. I can certainly see how these rules might take a lot of getting used to for someone who isn’t already familiar, but for me, seeing the rules with which I was already familiar implemented so well in a video game was awesome. The complexity in the rule system for this game probably surpasses any of the others, which is part of what I love about it.

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

The tactical combat in Dragon Age took some getting used to. I’ve now gotten a better feel for how the game camera zooms and pans – it’s a little odd, but it can be comfortable once you get used to it. I’ve also figured out how to stop my archers and mages from charging. It’s all about the “hold position” button that I didn’t know existed.

I’m having a lot of fun sneaking forward with my rogue to place traps and backstab, positioning fireballs and cones of cold for maximum effect, and looking forward to a point in the game when I’ll be able to use spell combos. Controlling four characters rather than the six you were allowed in Baldur’s Gate is a slight letdown, but overall I’m loving the game.

And these are the games in which I’ve most enjoyed the tactical combat. Next week, I’ll be bringing you the final installment in my Variations on a theme series.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

With Starcraft 2 slated for release in early 2010, you don’t hear much talk about Starcraft anymore. But when I look at my collection of older games and consider which I’d like to replay, Starcraft is always there. And I’ll always enjoy going back to it. I couldn’t do a Keepers column and not include Starcraft at some point.

Starcraft is the only decade-old game that I consistently see sold on store shelves alongside newer titles. I’ll look on the shelves and see Sims 3, Wrath of the Lich King, and Starcraft Battle Chest. There’s a reason. It’s the best RTS ever made, and it’s still fun. South Korea has made a national pastime out of the game. If you’ve never played Starcraft, you can get it for super-cheap now, and it will run beautifully on any PC you can find.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Okay, okay. So Pixeljunk Monsters is a downloadable PSN game, and as such I couldn’t sell it even if I wanted. But still, I’m playing the game from time to time even though I’ve had it for over a year. And I still haven’t gotten halfway through the expansion. It’s a great game, and if you haven’t yet read my three part strategy guide, you should check it out.

My first impression of Pixeljunk Monsters was not a good one. I took it as just another tower defense game, this one with a cutesy theme. Oh boy how the game grew on me. It’s probably my most-played Playstation 3 game now.  The layout of the trees on each board and the patterns in which the attacking monsters travel really lends a lot of complexity to the game. There are land-bound and flying monsters, some immune to fire, some immune to cold. You collect gold to buy towers and gems to upgrade the towers or purchase new tower types. Each tower has a different upgrade path, so it’s important to know with each upgrade whether you’ll be improving a tower’s range, speed, damage, or area of effect. I’ve created a pdf guide to help with that.

I finally just got past the “Paku-Paku” level on the expansion by using nothing but arrows and cannons, and one black hive near the end of the game to help kill the boss. I have a feeling that I’ll do with Pixeljunk Monsters what I did with Mariokart DS – take years to finish every last piece.

I’ve been a big fan of Desktop Tower Defense for years – I even bought the DS version, which is great. But it wasn’t until recently that the “pro” version came out online. It’s free, and there are tons of scenarios and levels to play out. Desktop Tower Defense is inarguably amongst the best of the free online flash games.

Play Desktop Tower Defense Pro

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Starcraft 2 is coming out soon, and I’ll be picking up a copy on day one. To prepare, I’d decided to go back and replay the single-player campaign in the original Starcraft. Again. But wait – what about Warcraft? No – not the MMO, I mean the other game that everyone has forgotten about – the RTS. Warcraft III.

It really is a great game – I’m replaying it now. I’ve finished the human and undead campaigns, and I’m in the midst of the orc campaign. I’ll admit that it’s not quite as good as Starcraft – few games are – but it’s a lot of fun despite its age. I love necromancers and meat wagons. I love Kodo beasts. I love planting mines. I love uprooting Elven structures. I only wish they’d included ships like in Warcraft 2.

After having completed most of the content in Plants vs Zombies, I’m still playing the game. As a tribute, I thought I’d take this opportunity to detail my five most favoritest plants and my five most hated zombies.

Firstly, the pumpkin. It’s far more expensive than the wall-nut, and has primarily the same effect. However, the pumpkin is placed directly on top of one of your plants, and it protects that plant while blocking zombies’ path. It also lets you fit more stuff into less space.

Next, the sun shroom. I don’t even use regular sunflowers at night. It’s true that sun shrooms only produce tiny units of sun for the first few minutes, but it’s not too long before they produce just as well as a sunflower, and they cost a quarter of what a sunflower does.

The hypno shroom is one groovy plant. Usually when a zombie eats your plant, you just lose the plant. But the hypno shroom is there to be eaten. The mushroom sends the zombie on such a crazy trip that it turns and tries to eat the other zombies’ brains. Best used on bucket-head zombies and football zombies.

When you’re looking for sheer damage, the Gatling pea is hard to beat. Sure, it’s expensive, but it fires four peas at a time. I use this one quite a lot.

And then there’s my beloved squash. There weren’t many levels in the game in which I didn’t use the squash. It’s a one-use plant, but as inexpensive as it is, and for what it does, it’s certainly worth it. And while a chomper eats a zombie whole and can be re-used, it only eats one at a time, and costs about triple what a squash does. I loves me some squash.

As powerful as some of this plants are, there are some badass zombies out there.

The snorkel zombie swims in your pool underwater where you can’t touch him. I hate this guy. Fortunately, he’s got to surface to eat plants, and this really is his only weakness. Planting lily pads in his way forces him to surface to munch on a near-worthless plant.

The Balloon zombie is even worse, as he’ll just fly right over all your plants. I hate this guy. Cacti can shoot him down, but they have to be planted in the correct lane. Thankfully, balloon zombies they only appear in your backyard at nighttime.

Next, the dreaded zomboni. The zomboni drives along, plowing down your plants, leaving in its wake an ice trail unfit for planting anything. Stupid zomboni. To add insult to injury, the zomboni is often followed by the Jamaican zombie bobsled team.

I think that Pogo zombies have eaten my brains more times than any other zombie. How I loathe them. They hop along very quickly, and just jump over all your plants. Tall nuts can stop them, and those magnet plants can steal their pogo sticks, but how many times you you actually use either of those plants?

Finally, Gargantaur. Or as I call him, the Master Blaster zombie. Right out of Thunderdome. It’s bad enough that he stops along, nearly invulnerable, and smashes your plants flat with one hit. But even worse, he throws the little imp on his back over three rows of plants and it proceeds to eat your sunflowers or whatever you’ve got planted back there. Stupid jerk.

Anyone else got some favorite plants or most-hated zombies that I missed?