Egg Worm Generator is a neat little sandbox game. Kyle Gabler says:

This was supposed to be a shooter, where you shoot peacefully evolving creatures. But I didn’t finish, and the creatures turned out too stupid to fight anyway. So instead, its a fishtank where you observe randomly generated creatures evolve and kind of learn to walk. Inspired by Karl Sims stuff from 1994. Press ’s’ to speed it up.

Download Egg Worm Generator

Since I first played Adventure Construction Set on the Commodore 64, I’ve been a big fan of games that let you create your own worlds. The more detailed, the better. After the fourteen-year-old me played through Rivers of Light and dissected it with the editor, I created many an adventure. I assembled fantasy worlds where I created my own magic swords, my own versions of manticores and wyverns, and my own castles and dungeons. I created a remake of The Goonies after having seen the movie for the first time. The restaurant, the tunnels beneath, the pursuing Fratellis, and One-Eyed Willy’s pirate ship. I also remember adding a toilet that would attack you in the basement of the restaurant for some reason. I probably just thought it was funny.

The Adventure Construction Set was a fun start for the twelve-year-old me, but it was just the beginning. I don’t think I got into videogame world-creation again until my adult life, when Neverwinter Nights was released with its Aurora Engine. The C-like language that they gave you enabled me to program my own rules for resting, where you were only allowed to set camp once per day, and you had a chance to be interrupted by wandering monsters. At an inn, you healed fully and there was no chance of monsters.

Neverwinter’s scripting engine allowed me to set scripted events, triggers, and traps, and do more than you’d ever expect. All in all, I spent a good year creating my Neverwinter Nights adventure. I think there was only once person who ever played it, and not to completion, but I had fun and learned a lot.

Today, games like LittleBigPlanet allow people to create some pretty amazing things, but as a console game, it can’t have as deep a toolset as a PC counterpart could have.

Andrew Armstrong brings things a bit further, incorporating RTS games and Sim City into his construction theme. I suppose that if I expanded like that, the one game I’d certainly include is Dungeon Keeper. The game is ancient, but it’s still very good.

In closing, I really enjoy games that allow me to create worlds, but the whole operation is so time-consuming that I can only really get into it once every ten or fifteen years.

Greg, I’m right there with you when it comes to the deluge of good games this year. And while I’m currently playing Modern Warfare 2, I still have a long list of stuff I hope to play before I die of old age. I didn’t manage to get an even 20 but hey, thems the breaks. Here goes!

14 – Borderlands (PC)
I want to play this game, and I don’t want to play this game. It sounds fun on so many levels, Greg thinks highly of it and I’m pretty sure it’ll run on the laptop. But, I’m still not convinced it’s got the single player chops to keep my attention and I don’t have enough time to get anything out of co-op. If this takes another price drop on Steam I’ll pick it up.

13 – Brütal Legend (PS3)
The demo for this game blew me away. The combat rocked, the art direction was awesome, Jack Black was, well Jack Black and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Then I read that the rest of the game plays out more like an RTS rather than the straight up hack & slash of the demo and I was immediately turned off. Of course, I never fully trust reviewers, so I’ll still buy the game at some point but I’m not nearly as excited for it now as I was after playing the demo.

12 – Muramasa, The Demon Blade (Wii)
I was super pumped for this game as well, until the reviews knocked the steam out of me and I pushed it down further on the Want List. I still plan on picking this game up, but probably not until it starts getting discounted.

11 – Uncharted & Uncharted 2 (PS3)
Amazingly, I’ve never played the first Uncharted. It’s right up my alley too, so not sure why I never got around to it.

10 – Machinarium (PC)
After reading the review for this game in Play Magazine, I decided this would be a perfect laptop game to help me kill time during lunch breaks.

9 – Ghostbusters (PS3)
I’ve asked Greg over and over again about this game, and I’m not sure why I’ve held off on playing it for this long. Even if it’s tough and inconsistent in patches, I loved the Ghostbusters as a kid and this is the spiritual (hah!) sequel to the movies. I’ve already purchased this game and it’s just waiting for me to get off my but and finish MW2.

8 – Boy and his Blob (Wii)
I have fond memories of this game on the NES, and the Wii revival just looks just as endearing as the first game.

7 – Obscure The Aftermath (PSP)
This is a revamped PSP port of the Wii survial horror game. I’m a newcomer to the SH scene and this one sounds a tad different from the typical Resident Evil style stuff. Plus I’m always looking for new games to pop into my PSP.

6 – New Super Mario Bros (Wii)
Hey, it’s a new Super Mario Bros. game done up on the old school sidescrolling platformer’s style. I’m looking forward to playing this one with my oldest daughter and teaching her the cutthroat rules of co-op.

5 – God of War collection (PS3)
I own the first GoW but have never played GoW II. I’ll probably go back and replay GoW just to sate the trophy whore in me, and then tackle the second game for the first time in all it’s new found HD glory. And don’t forget the trophies.

4 – CrossEdge (PS3)
This is a quirky little turn-based RPG featuring characters from all over the Capcom universe. About once a year I get a hankering for turn-based RPGs and this is one of the few available on the PS3 right now. Again, I’ll wait until it’s cheaper.

3 – Dragon Age: Origins (PC)
I got this game to run on my laptop and played the intro, it’s great stuff! The reason it’s staying on this list is I don’t anticipate having enough time to really get into it without major breaks. So I’ll probably just keep it warm until I have a nice long block of time to sink my teeth in.

2 – Dead Space Extraction (Wii)
I picked this up for $19 on Black Friday but I won’t touch it until I finish Dead Space on the PS3. It should play nicely with the $5 Wii Zapper I picked up off of eBay.

1 – Aion (PC)
This is probably just pie in the sky wishful thinking on my part. Aion is an MMO and I have no time for MMOs anymore. But, it looks really darn cool and a bunch of my old guildmates from WoW have banded together in this game. I’ll never be the guild leading raider I was in WoW, but this might be a fun distraction if I can convince my wife I need to pay the $15 a month to play it. If I could buy and dive into a new game tomorrow, Aion would be it.

So here we are at the fifth part of my series on the elements I enjoy most in games. This time, I’ll be talking about games that allow you to create and customize something. The two games that come to mind as having done this very well are the Mechwarrior series and the old Commodore 64 game Autoduel. Both give you the ability to construct vehicles and modify them with weapons and armor, and then ride them into combat.

I haven’t played Autoduel in many years, but I loved putting together vehicles with specifications geared to my own play style. You could select a sedan, a station wagon, a van, or any of a number of vehicle bodies. You’d then select a power plant and a tire type. Puncture proof and solid tires did especially well against spikedroppers. Then you’d place armor on the car’s various locations. If you were planning on charging enemies head-on, you’d put lots of armor up front. If you felt daring, you could save weight and money by not putting armor on the car’s undercarriage, but then if you ever hit a landmine, you were screwed.

The game then let you pick from many weapons, and place them wherever you wanted. You could mount dual rocket launchers on the front, a recoilless rifle on the side, or maybe a flamethrower on the vehicle’s rear. Personally, I was a big fan of the side-mounted laser. I’d just put tons of armor on that side of the vehicle, then drive circles around the enemy and fry him.

If there were ever an update of this game, they could add in turrets, gas versus electric engines, varying traction for different tire types, and maybe even ablative armor, which was always a favorite of mine when we’d play tabletop Car Wars.

In the Mechwarrior series, you select from a number of light, medium, heavy, or assault chassis, and then pile on armor and weapons. Weight is a serious consideration, as each chassis has a maximum weight limit. As you begin to add weapons, the heat they generate also becomes a factor. You can add heat sinks, but they take up more space and weight. Thus, the four limiting factors you have to consider are weight, heat, space, and of course money.

Mass driver weapons such as machine guns and autoguns are a standard, but you need to be sure to add ammunition for them, which takes up space. You can add as much ammo as you like, but should the part of the mech where you’ve stored the ammo take significant damage, the ammunition might explode, causing additional damage.

There are also energy weapons such as lasers and particle projection cannons. They require no ammo, but tend to generate much more heat, and you may find yourself waiting longer in between shots in order to prevent a forced shutdown triggered by excessive heat buildup.

Missiles can also be a good option. They tend to lock on, and thus require less work to aim manually. They require ammo just like mass drivers do, and have the same potential issues with ammo explosions. But they can take up a lot of space and weight, and don’t usually fire as quickly as the other alternatives.

Thus, it’s a trade off. The construction of a mech can be as much fun as playing through the actual combat. When you perfect a build that you really enjoy, deciding to add in jump jets, enhanced radar, anti-missile devices, or any of the other options, playing with that mech can be all the more rewarding.

I’ve always loved these types of games that give you a lot of depth in creating your engine of destruction, and then use them to kill enemies. I haven’t seen a good one in years. Hopefully this lawsuit doesn’t stop the new Mechwarrior game from coming out. I’d love to play it.

I played the original Wii version of No More Heroes and never finished because the two end bosses were really freaking hard, but I loved playing it. This is a trailer for the Hi-Def PS3 and 360 ports of the game. Looks fantastic.

This is an odd little shooter. Not as easy as you might think. You play a head – “death”, if you will. Your enemies? Monstars!

Play Death vs Monstars

This is the continuation of my series on the themes that I most enjoy in video games. Today, I’ll be writing about games that include really good tactical combat. It’s interesting to note that 50% of the games run on Dungeons and Dragons rules, and that 50% of them are turn-based, while the other 50% are pseudo-turn-based. I suppose that good tactical combat is more difficult in a real-time environment. Although I certainly love Starcraft, I find the tactics in the games I’m listing here to be much deeper, since as a player you’re given the time to really think things out.

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.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Dragon Age recently. I think I’ve figured out the basics of combat, and I’ve gotten mostly used to the camera. I’m going to relate my thoughts on the game so far, and if I seem to be overly vague at times, it’s only because I want everybody to be able to read this without worrying about spoilers.

As is normal for me with these games, my first playthrough is being done with a good guy character. I do like that Dragon Age has no strict character alignments – my human noble thief isn’t “neutral good”. But the way I’m playing him would likely translate that way in D&D terms. Still, Dragon Age cares more about characters’ opinions of you than about whether any given action is good or evil. Because of this, I find myself thinking about how various NPCs would react to various actions before I take them. Forcing the player to consider the feelings of an NPC is a great way to make the characters feel more lifelike.

As I play, I find myself really feeling like my main character Johann and the other Grey Warden Alistair have a bond. They’re in this together alone, and they only have each other to count on. I feel like they’re best friends, and I consciously role-play to that effect during conversations. When I configure my party and it doesn’t include Alistair, I find myself feeling a bit guilty that Johann is leaving his best friend behind. I’ve never seen a video game come this close to true role-playing. Similarly, Morrigan continually rubbed me the wrong way. When she finally asked something of me that I felt my character wouldn’t have been comfortable with, I let Morrigan leave rather than cater to her less than ethical whims.

I love the fact that each NPC has an approval rating, and when that approval rating rises enough, the characters gain a new in-game skill that improves attributes, ostensibly due to my character’s leadership.

I’ve realized at this point that the game consists of standard gameplay punctuated by crushingly difficult battles. Whereas my Baldur’s Gate games generally found me with a surplus of potions and other single-use items that I never got around to using, the potions, poisons, traps, and grenades in Dragon Age need to be carefully rationed for the more difficult fights. During my most recent battle against a Revenant, it would have been so nice to have a fire bomb. Just one. The skeletons were grouped so perfectly, and Johann could have easily used stealth to get within range and bomb the hell out of them before they had a chance to move. But I didn’t have one. And that fight was hard. The hardest fight I’ve found yet is the defense of Redcliff against a nighttime assault from the undead. Healing the NPC militia members was helpful, but ultimately it only delayed the inevitable – they still died. My party died too. At least 6 or 7 times. Using a fighter, a thief, a healer, and an archer ended up being the best way to go, although keeping the healer and archer out of harm’s way was difficult. The Mabari War hound’s stunning howl ability was also a big help, and I had to continually move my thief into backstab positions with a poisoned dagger. Meanwhile, the healer was downing lyrium potions like a raging alcoholic to keep healing the militia, and throwing stone fists strategically to keep my fighters from being flanked too badly.

Thankfully, I haven’t had to switch to “easy” difficulty yet to get through a fight, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the entire game that way, based on what I’ve heard of how the difficulty ramps up later in the game. Switching my thief from sword-and-dagger to two daggers paid off bigtime, as his attack speed seems to have doubled, and I’m finding that the dog is a better tank than any of the humans I’ve got. I haven’t yet found archery to be the most useful option, and I have yet to pick up most of the area of effect spells I’d like – those should help quite a bit.

I’ll likely be writing more about Dragon Age in the weeks to come. I’m loving it.

In continuing my writing on a year-and-a-half-old Blogs of the Round Table topic, I come to the subject of gameplay variety. I wrote about this topic myself roughly a year before it came up on BoRT, but it may be time to revisit the subject.

The two examples I like to look at for gameplay variety are The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Beyond Good and Evil. Twilight Princess has swordfighting, goat-herding, fishing, chicken gliding, sumo wrestling and wolf-howling. Beyond Good and Evil has fighting, vehicle driving, platforming, first-person shooting, puzzle solving, item collecting, air hockey, and my favorite: stealth. All are drastically different types of gameplay, and serve to keep the game fresh as you play.

Variety like this in what I can only term an “action-adventure” game is rare, but it’s hard not to love a well-made game with gameplay diversity as deep as that in the above two titles.

Indigo Prophecy had a good deal of gameplay variety, which is a large part of the reason I liked it, and games like Super Mario Galaxy and Space Rangers 2 certainly try hard. But I can’t think of any games that have come out in the past 2-3 years with gameplay variety close to that of Twilight Princess and Beyond Good and Evil. Can you?