Galcon is a rather simple game that can be played on your own, or online with up to 12 players on any number of teams.
I first got introduced to Galcon by Robin and the fact that it was so easy to pick up and understand was great. It was a rather simple game, with simple objectives, and simple rules. It is the type of game that is fun just like Minesweeper or Solitaire is.
Basically in multi-player mode, the host chooses various options, like how many planets a player starts with, and what size the planet is, and various other options. In single player mode these options are predefined based on the mode you choose.
Simply put, Galcon starts everyone with the same identical type of planets for the most part. Usually your planet will generate 100 ships per minute. You can use these ships to capture other planets. Each planet on the screen has a value. The bigger the planet, the more ships it produces when it is captured.
At the start of the game usually there are many, many planets that have no affiliations. These are most likely your primary targets. These planets have big numbers on them which indicates the amount of ships you need to capture it. When you send ships, they basically sacrifice themselves until the planet is captured. Once the planet is captured, all the ships that you send to your own planet will simply be put in reserve on the planet. This adds up quickly when you factor in the amount of ships the planet itself produces.
Enemy planets do not indicate how many ships are located on them as the neutral planets do, so when you feel your army is strong enough to attack a planet, you must choose wisely.
If you strike early on, you can tell if a planet is strong or not, based on the amount of ships the enemy needed to sacrifice to capture the planet, and based on how many ships he sent.
Strategy is key when it concerns this game. For the most part, the person with the most planets at any given time has the lead and should win. But replenishing ships is not instantaneous, and if one player has 4 planets with next to no ships on them, and the other player has 3 planets with 30 on them, the second player can just pick off the enemy one at a time.
Defending planets is the same thing as capturing. Basically you need to have more ships there then the enemy. If he sends more than you have there when he arrives, then the enemy will capture the planet.
It is a fast paced game that can usually end a round in about 5 minutes or less. As you have seen on these videos, my rounds are around 1 minute .
Online can be a bit more tactical. Ultimately you need to befriend someone in order to win, or you must be very lucky. Skill can only take you so far, as ultimately it is a numbers game. Simple math. Player X produces 400 ships per minute in total, you produce 200 ships per minute; well you would need to capture more planets before he captures your or you will be toast.
Galcon has basic chat in the game so you can talk to players online as you fight them, and you can even designate yourself to watch mode, so you can view a match in progress without participating. You are not excluded from the chat, however.
Ultimately my opinion of this game is tied directly to its cost. This is a fun little game, with a large price tag, and is ultimately why it is not everywhere.
This game costs $20, [EDIT: This game is now only $7.95] which is what 1-2 year old PC games cost nowadays, and there is MUCH better bangs for your buck. Considering this developer used an open-source game engine, gives it yet another thumbs-down.
Being able to use the game in trial mode is nice and all, and all things considered, you aren’t missing much by refusing to buy it, as the trial allows you to play online. The single player features are simply different scenarios. There is no campaign, no story. Just various starting scenarios and that’s it. The game play does not change.
All this time, and I have not committed a full post to this awesome game! What a shame! No more, though. I am going to dissect this game like never before!
Ok, with that out of the way, let me introduce you to the world of Simulation Auto Racing! Yay!
This game and this franchise has been a part of my life since I can ever remember owning a computer. This game franchise started in 1994 with the incredible game NASCAR Sim Racing. This was followed by NASCAR Sim Racing 2, NASCAR Sim Racing 1999 Edition, NASCAR Sim Racing 3, NASCAR Sim Racing 4, and finally NASCAR Sim Racing 2002 Season.
(PHEW!!)
I have owned every single one of these games except NASCAR Sim Racing 2 (and various expansion packs I didn’t have the money for). The transformation these games have made has been astounding. Ever since the release of NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition, this game had a new version released yearly.
The success of this franchise was in its realism. Simply put, the tracks, the cars, the physics and everything associated with NASCAR was the best in the business. No one had more official tracks in their games, or more official car sponsors, or more official drivers.
This game had all of it. On top of this, though, they had the most realistic driving game out there too. Graphic quality aside, this game looked right. Cars were hard to handle. They spun out in the right way, they crashed the right way, and damage models were scary-real.
As computer technology improved, so too did things in the graphics department and the sound department. During the transition to NASCAR 3, Papyrus (the game’s developers) added cool effects like a ‘groove’ that closely resembled a ‘groove’ you would see at a real NASCAR track. They added translucent smoke, so no longer were you left with cartoon-ish looking smoke. You could the see the fog surrounding cars in front of you, and better avoid wrecks (although heavy wrecks you couldn’t see through, so good luck getting through! Another dose of realism!).
Once NASCAR 4 came around we were allowed to have Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Daytona at our fingertips for the first time, as these venues had open rights to appear in games (Daytona had been SEGA exclusive previously). In addition, the NASCAR team implemented new physics, which allowed cars to get airborne (previously only sliding and rotating happened, which was fine because hitting a wall upside down or not still was a wreck). This just upped the ante on the realism.
NASCAR Racing 2002, and then NASCAR Racing 2003 season (NR2003 for short from now on) added new effects like blimps hovering around the tracks and helicopters, as well as sunlight effects on cameras, with reflections at an all-time high, and shadows playing a major role in the game.
These things have allowed NR2003 to live on, even to this day, even though the game has passed it’s 6th birthday.
The game has 2 comprehensive modes: Single Race, and Multiplayer. There are two additional ‘support’ modes: Season and Testing.
Single Race mode acts the way you would expect. You set up the settings many different ways. You can have a short race at any of the tracks available, you can set the number of computer controlled cars, their strength and also things like whether yellow flags are enabled and how fast fuel and tires get consumed.
Of course a rate of 1x is considered ‘normal,’ as in, closest to real life. You cannot slow the rate of fuel consumption to slower than that, although I don’t know why you would want to.
Computer controlled cars and their overall strength is determined by a combination of the base strength you assign them when entering a race, and also by their stats as defined by the game. You can go into the settings and adjust the strengths of any driver. The game does not inherently know “Jeff Gordon is this good at this track,” it simply got supplied these values by a human.
You can make your own cars using a paint shop in the game (although making skins for the car out of the game and then simply importing them works much better). You can then set the settings of this player any way you like. You can make your own player, or you can add a player you wish to be included.
This level of customization really brings the fun into racing. It’s fun to try to beat the ‘other guys’ with ‘your own stuff.’
To go along with the single player mode is Testing, and Season mode. Season simply is a predefined series of Single Races that compiles a rank of drivers based on the order they finish after each race. The driver with the most points at the end of the races wins. This mimicks the way the Championship was decided at the time the game was released (NASCAR has since changed it).
The testing mode is a practice mode that allows you to go to a track without any other cars and practice. This is the place to go to get better. Driving around while trying to avoid other cars is no way to get better at a certain track, although if you wish to get better at passing then that is the way to go .
Multiplayer is an experience all its own. Unfortunately at this point the servers are no longer maintained and the only way to play online is through dedicated servers. Finding these servers can be tricky, and you must connect via IP address. This is ok, but the standard 40 car fields is hard to come by.
Onto the gameplay itself: the physics (which is central to a simulation being good simulation) is nearly spot-on. Issues I have noticed, though, are that the cars seem to ‘stick’ to the walls, rather than bounce off. This is maddening as it can quickly ruin any form of momentum you had. You can try to steer quickly off the wall but this usually results in a spin, and if you don’t turn away from the wall, you will grind almost to a complete halt (not kidding).
Also it appears that the computer controlled players are not being controlled by physics the same way your car is. This makes their cars seem to rotate around a corner, instead of drive through it. This isn’t a big deal though, since all cars spin just as easily as you do, and generally slow down and speed up in the same locations you do. There does seem to be issues with the AI running into the back of you if you go too slow, and they can spin you out quite easily if this happens, but generally if they are running into you, you are running at way too high a difficulty level.
Physics in the game on the whole are strong though. The car gets airborne exactly the way you would expect. It doesn’t happen all the time. usually it requires you to get hit in the side at a very high rate of speed to turn you over.
The difficulty level on the whole is high, but driving cars on the brink of spinning out is not supposed to be easy. Conquering this and winning races is a challenge, and as such, is very rewarding when you pull it off. Even finishing 2nd can feel like an accomplishment if you run a long enough race.
This game, just as in real life, is about minimizing your mistakes. The longer you go, the harder it is. While no single small mistake will take you out, multiple small mistakes or one large mistake will put you behind in a hurry. This is true-to-life.
In addition to the total package Papyrus has brought us, the community has brought us even more. Perhaps the most beneficial add-ons have come from the Project Wildfire (PWF) Stable. These guys have released mods for different car types such as the craftsman trucks series, and the Busch series. They have released a few tracks that are of extremely high quality, and they have released the most beneficial tool of all: Sandbox.
Sandbox is the tool Papyrus used to create the tracks in-game, and combining this tool with others has allowed anyone who wants, to make their very own tracks.
The way the game simply sucks in game resources (such as tracks and cars) has allowed the community to update the game for us.
It is very easy to download and use up-to-date tracks, and cars in the game. I have even made my own track that has gotten some love at one of the places still offering online racing.
The overall impact of this game is immense. The effects of this game are un-matched. Smoke still to this day looks spot-on, as well as damage models and light effects. While driving and winning are hard to do, succeeding is VERY rewarding.
Combine these things, and an ever-present online community providing fresh updates to the game and we have a real classic here. This game still takes up tons of my time, and I am thrilled to be able to share it here.
If you are able to get your hands on a copy, I recommend you pick it up. I wouldn’t pay the $100 or $200 it fetches from 3rd parties, but if you can get it for cheap, do it.
The world of computer games is a vast world. There can be many different flavors of computer games, varying from Flight Simulators, to city management games, to real time strategy games and first person shooters.
Savage 2 is the type of game that merges game types, in a way that hasn’t been seen in this type of package before.
This game actually combines the real time strategy component of games, and the role playing / third person type of game, and merges them into one.
I first found Savage 2 by typing these fateful words into Google: “Free MMO RPG.” This was a VERY bad thing to do. See, I enjoy World of Warcraft tremendously, but the game is expensive as all hell. Having to pay $15 a month, every month is a lot to pay. Sure you get a lot out of it, and I am not going to say it is a bad value, but cheap it is not.
This lead me to try to find an experience similar to World of Warcraft, that wasn’t necessarily identical. That’s when I came across Savage 2.
When visiting the web site I was at first skeptical about this ‘FREE’ thing they had going on. I didn’t know if this was free for a month, then you pay or something, or what it was. I was expecting a ‘catch.’ As it turns out there is no catch – other than if you pay to upgrade your online account, you get more ‘stuff.’
Fortunately these do not restrict your ability to play a very fun and deep game. They simply restrict you to things like 4 item slots instead of 6, and things along those lines. They don’t make you weaker or anything like that. Of course if you want, you can pay $10 bucks and gain those extra slots and extra perks. This appears to be a one time fee.
After downloading this game, not knowing much about it, I instantly went into the tutorial. This was my chance to understand exactly what was going on. As it turns out there is a lot.
The first part required me to learn basic combat maneuvers, which seemed pretty straight forward. There was your standard WASD movement, 3rd person view, and you had your standard 1, 2, 3 … etc keys for magic and general abilities. This seemed pretty straightforward, as it mirrored World of Warcraft pretty well (with the exception of simple projectile weapons being used in Savage 2).
The next part required me to play the game in RTS mode. This is where things got strange. I had no issues controlling the players to do certain things, and was able to follow directions to victory quite easily.
This confused me though. I had no idea how the game would be played outside of tutorial mode. I didn’t know what was what, and ultimately I felt very lost at this point.
I played the tutorial one more time and once again, did not know how exactly I was going to play this in non-tutorial mode. I then headed online to play live.
Ultimately, I realized, I was to choose. While only one person can play in ‘God’ mode (RTS mode, or as Savage 2 calls it, ‘Commander’), no one person is conscripted to play the part. It is voluntary. If more than one person offers, then a simple vote is taken to determine who is commander.
Teams are auto-balanced (to an extent) and everyone who isn’t a Commander fights in 3rd person mode. This mode is pretty straightforward, and it is up to these people to conquer areas for their commander to build mines to gather gold (the game’s currency) and to fortify it with towers.
The action can be fast and intense, and each round can last anywhere from 10-15 minutes, to over an hour.
The game being mainly online-only is both good and bad. Dealing with humans is hard to deal with, as some go off to fight their own battles, and it makes it tough to defend certain areas, and capture others. As commander, or a player on the field of battle, it can be frustrating to work as a team.
Commanders generally play a small role in the outcome of the game if not keeping up with the game. Commanders how wonderful powers that can allow them to heal players in the field of battle, resurrect fallen teammates, and various other spells that affect players. Commanders even have spells that can effect enemy players.
The commander can only see what is revealed in the fog of war. The fog of war generally works the same as in any RTS, which essentially is viewable as the players move around the map. Since these characters are controlled by other people, it takes some coordinating to get tactics in order. It is quite possible for players in the field to see enemies before the commander will.
On the subject of teams, it appears that the two races are not balanced. This is hard to measure since individual skill levels of the people playing cannot be measured. It seems, though, like the Beast Horde have the upper hand.
In my experience playing the game the Beast Horde usually win the game, in spite of the Human’s best efforts. Usually if the Humans win it is due to the other team being down a man or they simply don’t care.
And talking about being down a man, the way the selection system works, it seems that the beast horde is always the team that gets the 1st, ‘next’ player. What I mean by that is if the teams are balanced by volume, the next player to join the lobby can only join the horde. So if it is 3 on 3, the horde get the next player, that player cannot join the humans. Odd number games are not hard to come by, so this outcome happens far too often, and may be a big factor the Horde always seem to win.
On the whole though, this is a very solid game. The 3rd person RPG style action is fun, and the type of combat varies. As you build up your base you can add new buildings which unlock new classes, such as siege weapons for the humans, and giant trolls for the horde. These unlocked classes can swing the momentum of battle and are valued as such.
The RPG element is great too. You can be the eye in the sky for your team and show them what the enemy is doing and form tactics this way. This allows the fighters to fight, and the good players will follow your commands.
At the end of the day, this is a solid game all-around. The graphics are not state-of-the-art, but are close to on par with games such as World of Warcraft. The number of effects are lower then that game, but the level of details are similar. The sound is a bit lacking, as there is not much music (if any) to speak of, and the sound effects can only be summarized as ‘generic.’ They are not awful, they get the job done, but that is about it.
This game is in fact free, however, and as such is perhaps the greatest freeware game out there. If you have something else, let me know, I’d love to take a look at it.
I know there are lots of sites out there that review games. There are lots of sites that review EVERY game. There are other sites that don’t review games that have come out over a year ago, even if they haven’t reviewed it before.
But this site isn’t like those other sites. Those other sites are not MY site, so I will do things MY way.
Good, now that we have this out of the way, let’s begin.
For starters, let’s talk about where Halo 3 came from. The Halo universe was first introduced into the world in 2001, as Xbox’s killer launch title. Although the game got great reviews and pulled off a great feat by simultaneously releasing Halo on the PC and Mac as well.
Halo quickly rose up the ladder of best FPS games of it’s time, and honestly has a strong case to be declared best FPS ever. While a lot of the things Halo does has been applauded, one of it’s greatest signatures was what it didn’t. Simply put, you could not stock pile weapons to your heart’s content. You were allowed two and that’s it.
Sure you could have grenades too, but weapons were your primary tool of destruction. This led to a simple, yet much needed change of pace, and planning that other games lacked. This improved realism immensely, but also allowed for a player to go through a thick firefight swapping weapons constantly.
The formula to success has largely remained unchanged through Halo 2, and landed on our laps in 2007 as Halo 3. Halo 3 takes a lot of the changes found in Halo 2 and improves on them.
For one, the health system is nearly identical. There is no health bar that underlies your standard shields. You can also dual-wield certain guns, personally the SMG is my favorite to dual-wield, and your traditional grenades are still there as well.
To make things a little more interesting, Halo 3 has introduced new items, that can be used in a variety of ways. Using the ‘X’ button you can throw a generic covenant shield in front of you to protect you from fire in front, or you can drop a ‘bubble shield,’ (this is the item Master Chief uses in the video shown above). This is one of my favorite power-ups. It prevents all things except other players from passing through. Also available are things such as health re-generators, shield depletion orbs, bright orbs of light brighter than the sun and many others.
These need to be found in the battle field, and only one can be equipped at a time. You can’t have multiples in any way.
In addition, Bungie has added a few new grenade types. The most common third type you will see is spike grenades. They work generally the same as plasma grenades, but they stick to everything, walls included, whereas plasmas can slide off walls just like normal.
Less commonly, you can find grenades that act like flamethrowers and just dowse their surroundings in flames.
Also there are a couple of new weapons, notably a gun called the ‘brute shot’, which roughly correlates with the Assault Rifle. There is also a new weapon, called the grav hammer.
This guy you essentially hold much like you would a flag, and them proceed to smash opponents into smithereens as it sends out a strong shock wave.
As far as weapons are concerned, they all seem to do a wonderful job of managing each weapon’s strengths and weaknesses. No one weapon feels too powerful on the whole. Swords are fun to run around with, but they are only usable in short range. This results in your necessity to stay in small places so as not to get picked off.
The assault rifle (and the Brute Shot) are generally medium range. You can start firing from about 50 yards away, but usually the finishing kill ends up being a melee attack.
Battle rifles hold an edge on the medium-long range due to their combination of medium power, good accuracy, and large ammo capacity. This weapon is a Halo staple.
Longer range still is the sniper rifle. This takes perhaps the most skill to master, but if you can, you will be a lethal weapon out on the battlefield.
Looking at the graphics side of things, this is a HUGE case of bitter-sweet. On the one hand everything looks gorgeous. Light looks pristine and reflections, explosions and shadows look great. Details are high, with grass and vines in jungles looking nearly life-like.
All this beauty comes at a very high cost, however. The two greatest components to a sharp, and near perfect picture are simply not there: resolution and anti-aliasing.
Either of these components lacking would be understandable and easy to accept. However, both of these elements lacking, sure puts a damper on just how beautiful the game looks.
It has been revealed that the game only renders in 640 vertical lines of pixels, which doesn’t even measure up to a traditional 720p HDTV. This fact, combined with no anti-aliasing to speak of, makes diagonal lines look blocky, and corners appear less than perfect. Overall the game does a great job in its effects department, but the lack of resolution and AA really seems apparent on the models.
This small issue does not drag the game down with it. In fact, graphics is hard to complain about. The explosions look nearly perfect, light reflects nearly perfect, water, grass and the details of the characters are nearly perfect as well. All told, while the graphics are not flawless, they are close. Very close.
Sound is one area this game and this series has always excelled. Once again Marines and Grunts chatter in their usual way, making funny jokes, screaming bloody murder, and even respond to the fact Master Chief, Master Chief, has come to save the day.
Warthogs and other vehicles sound spot-on. Explosions are dramatic and satisfying. Voice acting is superb as well. This leads me in a way closer to the game’s true gem: it’s score.
Halo has always had my favorite sound tracks. This iteration is no different. The music is dramatic, grand, bold and exciting. At times it can be mellow, and somber. Simply put, this game has my favorite sound track of all time.
From the game play side, this is where the game becomes addicting. To start with, the game has 4 different difficulty levels, and each one seems tailored perfectly.
Easy is a difficulty level that no one who cares about games should need to play on. Easy is for the people who are playing games, or more specifically, First Person Shooters, for the first time.
Normal difficulty is for the people who haven’t yet enjoyed the Halo universe, but may be experienced in other FPS, or generally have a difficult time keeping up.
At this point the game gets into it’s “normal” mode. Although “normal” is reserved for the level beneath this, Heroic mode is truly the way Halo is meant to be played. This is the difficulty level that will satisfy you, yet yearning for more. After beating the game on this mode, you really ought to head straight for legendary mode.
Legendary mode is insane. Only the brave and talented should enter here. You can count on getting stopped very frequently. You will need to be very creative, not to mention very skilled, to get yourself out of some of the messes you can get into.
The campaign mode picks up right where Halo 2 left off. At this point, you and the arbiter go to find the prophets and attempt to take them out. On the way you will encounter scores of enemies of different squad sizes, in different situations all over.
Halo 3 does a good job of mixing in different elements into the game as well. There are numerous vehicle levels, varying from driving Warthogs, Scorpion tanks, to even your own Hornet (although you spend FAR too little time using the Hornet).
There are epic boss battles that usually end in the most satisfying of ways, usually with a huge explosion.
The flood play a large roll in this game again. Although this time, your job is to rescue Cortana, and stop the Covenant through any means necessary. This briefly allies you with the Flood that deserves to be enjoyed.
The game does a much better job of cleaning up after itself compared to the miserable job Halo 2 did. There are no major cliffhanger endings, and the story does a decent job of wrapping up.
After completing the campaign, if you hadn’t scoped out multi-player, this is where the game truly shines.
The game comes with several maps, each unique in almost every way. There are snow levels, desert levels, jungle levels, swamp levels, hill levels. You name it, it’s there.
The gameplay is often fast and intense. Finding other players is generally easy. Success comes to those with good aim and better scouting.
Power ups play a big role in multi-player. A well timed bubble shield can really sway a skirmish, and a shield re-generator can be a real life saver.
Extra maps can be downloaded off the Xbox Marketplace for an additional cost, which stinks for matchmaking due to many of the game types requiring newer maps. There is no option to go into games with certain maps. A lobby requires all members to carry certain maps before you even enter.
The game types online are generally good too. There is traditional slayer and team slayer, that is just about scoring more kills than anyone else. Oddball and king of the hill are possession type games.
Halo 3 also allows you to create custom game types. You can edit almost all of the pertinent information about each team. In addition you can edit any map you like in forge mode, which can then be shared online.
Each person has 6 slots to store replays from either the campaign or multi-player, or even custom multi-player maps. Many crazy events have been shared thanks to this new feature and it is sure to go on and on.
Overall this game is the total package. Fabulous campaign mode that is completely satisfying in almost every way, terrific multi-player action that can go on for days on end, nearly perfect graphics (although with some notable issues), and perfect sound.
This game must be one of the best games available for the Xbox 360.
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