Not Quite Review Corner: Boom Beach (iOS, Android)

Boom Beach is something I hadn't heard of, even though it's been out for a year, until one of its cheerful adverts caught my eye. I've been playing this freemium app for about a week now, and the excitement hasn't begun to pall. It's one of my new obsessions, which I hope to pass on to you.

Boom Beach takes place in a massive archipelago, populated mostly by tiny villages. You command a mercenary band whose objective is to bring the archipelago under your control. Technically the game describes this as 'free the enslaved villages' but I can't help but notice that, as soon as the villagers are freed, they start paying you tribute, making this less about freeing the oppressed and more about 'new boss, same as the old boss'. In order to do this, you control an attacking force which you can send out via landing craft to the other islands, invading up the beach, smashing the enemy defenses, and blowing up the enemy's HQ. The HQ is the most important building on the map; destroy that and you've won the battle, but don't think for a moment that it'll be easy!

The cartoonish not-quite-Second-World-War visual aesthetic is a lot of fun, and though it's all about combat it's pretty bloodless, which means you don't have to worry about younger gamers getting an eyeful of viscera. Mechanically the controls are very simple. You have no direct control over your troops once they land, so they tend to head straight for the nearest target and shoot it up. Once battle begins, your main means of controlling the situation is from the gunboat offshore, which can fire flares to direct your troops where they need to be, use healing medkits to keep them upright, fire artillery shells on enemy positions to weaken them before the troops get there, and so on. The more experience you get, the more things the gunship can do, but it's powered by energy, which is refreshed only when your troops blow up buildings. This makes each battle an interesting mix of strategy versus utility. Do you send a flare to your troops sending them off to an undefended section of the map, so they can blow up buildings there, thus powering up the gunship which can fire off artillery at something dangerous? Do you head straight for the HQ, therefore not blowing up stuff, therefore not powering up the gunboat? Choices, choices ...

Your main NPC opponent is the Blackguard, a fiendish gang of ruffians dressed in Nazi black who run a series of bases all over the map. Destroy the base and the villagers who live there are free, free to give you all their money and send off tribute every few hours. Ahem. Your initial boss enemy is Hammerman, whose bases are very well defended, but the loot once you beat his pointy head in is phenomenal. Later you'll face off against more difficult boss enemies, but Hammerman's the NPC who'll dominate your early game experience.

Or you could just sally forth and destroy other players' bases, stealing their gold and raw materials. No damage is permanent, so if you blow up half a dozen of another player's buildings they all get rebuilt for no cost after the attack's over. You'll be very grateful for this when someone invades your base and reduces it to rubble!

Speaking of your own island, what if someone raids it, blowing up your HQ and stealing your stuff? You have a range of defensive options, such as the sniper tower, flamethrower, mines, machine gun nest, mortar, cannons and so forth. Again, the more experienced you become, the more options unlock, but each option needs raw materials both to build and upgrade it. The basic raw material is wood, used to build all the low-level gear. Then there's stone, then metal, each of which is progressively more difficult to obtain. Level one defensive buildings won't be able to cope with experienced attackers, so you need to keep upgrading constantly. In addition to the raw materials, each building takes time both to construct and upgrade; at the beginning this might be just ten minutes or so, but soon it's an hour, then two or three hours, and so on.

This is where the freemium bit comes in. The game's special currency is diamonds, which can be used both to buy raw materials and, more importantly, to speed up the building process. Spend diamonds, and that cannon which might take half a day to build is done in less time than it takes to type this sentence. Spend enough diamonds, and your entire base can be fully upgraded, ready to hold off even the most determined opponent.

While freemium is a problem for many people, I have to say I haven't found it to be so here. The big problem with freemium is that the developers often restrict the flow of the premium currency, making it difficult to proceed without spending money. The Simpsons Tapped Out is a prime example of this; it runs on doughnuts, which are almost impossible to find through gameplay, and since many buildings and important characters can only be unlocked by spending doughnuts, the player feels almost obliged to spend money. Not so here. Diamonds can be found in the wild, and can also be unlocked through completing achievements, making it relatively easy to collect a whole bunch without spending a dime.

Play style may also be a factor. This isn't a title you can sink hours at a stretch into; Boom Beach is something you pick up, play for fifteen or twenty minutes, then put down again. Perfect for a smoke break or a quick bash at lunch, but of course in the time in between, when you're not actively playing, you can be quietly upgrading your sniper tower, or whatever else needs doing. So long as you're happy with that, Boom Beach is for you, but if you demand hours at a time from your mobile app then you might get a little frustrated.

I'd recommend this to any gamer looking for a quick strategy experience. It's fun enough for a few minutes at a time, with just enough complexity in it to keep your brain working without overtaxing it. It's not for anyone looking for a complicated strategy experience, or who's hoping for a title that will occupy a lot of their time. It's also not for people who hate to lose. Your troops will get shot up, your base will be raided, your gold stolen, resources nicked. So what? It's only stuff, stuff you didn't pay for, and which you nicked off someone else. Don't get mad. Get even!

Incidentally if you should become a Boom Beach player and happen to come across a charming fellow called Spanky Burn, that's me. I love you, you love me, but stay orf moi laaaand!

Not Quite Review Corner: XCOM Enemy Within

Yes, I write for the Escapist; no, this has nothing to do with the Escapist.

Firaxis' XCOM Enemy Within is conquering the gaming world, and with good reason. It's a fun title, a worthy successor to XCOM Enemy Unknown, and if you're a fan of strategy games it's well worth your time. That said, there's one big problem: bugs.

I'm not talking about the Sectoids, Thin Men and other aliens who've arrived on spaceships to enslave humanity. I'm talking about game breakers; bugs that crash the game, and destroy any chance of completing the level. I've just finished a round where I had to abandon mid-match, because the AI refused to believe I'd won. All the Sectoids had been shot, bar one, who happened to be standing next to a car when it exploded. Except the game didn't recognize the exploded Sectoid, and because it didn't the only other way to finish the match was to abort the mission, giving up all the rewards I'd fought for. It's also crashed to desktop at least four or five times for reasons unknown, and one particular EXALT mission has a nasty habit of not activating once you reach a certain checkpoint. Trouble is, if it doesn't activate then you can't complete, and as this is a story mission, not just some random match, you really don't want to abort. 

All of which will be very frustrating if, like me, you play Ironman, a game variant where every death is permanent and you can't restart from a previous save. At least three Ironman games had to be dropped because of that EXALT mission bug.

Now the bad part's out of the way, let me talk about the good.

XCOM, for those not familiar with the series, takes place in a near future Earth, which has been invaded by aliens. Nobody knows why they're here or how many of them are out there, and it's your job, as Commander of the elite special forces unit XCOM, to sort things out. You have at your disposal the best of the best, who'll research things for you, build things for you, and go out into the wide world and shoot things for you. The heart of the game is that last bit, where you guide your troops across the battlefield, looking for aliens to shoot and special rewards, like Meld, to collect.

Your first few missions are fairly simple, which is good news, as your base needs work and your soldiers are inexperienced numbskulls who can't hit the broad side of a barn. Over time, as you gather more materials, collect Meld to enhance your troops, autopsy the aliens you shoot, and level up your soldiers, you'll put together a crack force of hardened veterans, build a base filled with laboratories, workshops, and other useful gadgets, all in preparation for the endgame where you track down the alien base and destroy it.

You'll find yourself switching from tactical view to battlefield, eying up the best chances and making swift decisions. Do you intervene in India and stop an alien attack, or is it a better idea to wait and heal your troops? Nigeria, the USA and Japan are all screaming for help, and you have a satellite handy. Do you launch it and pacify one of those three, or save it in case of emergency? Russia's asking for materials from the UFO you just shot down, and promises aid to the project if you comply; is it a good idea, or do you need those materials more than Russia does?

As a tactical wargame experience, there's nothing as good as XCOM. When it works, it's the perfect squad-level game, and there's plenty of mission variety. The UFOs you shoot down need to be searched, alien attacks must be stopped before global panic spreads, the Council of Nations who signs the paychecks demands you do something dangerous in Canada, and so on. Enemy AI is extremely sharp, and will often outwit you if you're not careful. Plus there's an extraordinary variety of opposition out there, from human quislings EXALT to the savage Crysalids, Mutons, and psychic Sectoid Commanders. And that's just scratching the surface.

If it wasn't for the bugs ... I keep coming back to that, because the original game - though it had its faults - wasn't nearly as buggy as this. It's particularly aggravating in Ironman, where you can't take back a mistake. It's one thing to be stymied by your own stupidity, something else when the game smacks you in the face, potentially ruining hours of play.

Even with the bugs, it's getting a recommendation from me. Just don't play it on Ironman, at least not yet. Wait until it gets patched.

That's it for this installment! Next time, something for Night's Black Agents.

 PS: Since I wrote this, I've tried playing straight Classic, no Ironman. That seems to work fine. I haven't had a single crashout or experienced any major bugs. I'm beginning to wonder if this is something that only affects Ironman's save-every-turn function. In any case, I'm sure future patches will solve the problem. 

How Fast is that Byakhee?

Flying Coffins is a Great War theme Trail of Cthulhu scenario in which the players are knights of the air, battling the enemy and the Mythos in flying machines made of canvas, wood, and not much else. The pilots have to work out how to defeat the forces of the Mythos without getting shot down by more conventional forces. There's a review here. Naturally, since the scenario involves some wargaming elements, people have questions about the rules, and one that's come up has significant implications for gameplay. Namely, just how fast is that Byakhee?

It's not a trivial question. The speed of the creature factors into the air combat mechanics. If the players can get an advantage by flying a faster aircraft, they've got a better chance of beating the scenario. However it's not a question I feel comfortable answering, for a number of reasons.

The first is also the most obvious. I have no idea how fast they'd fly. I can guesstimate "pretty damn fast," but that doesn't really provide a miles per hour figure. It's not as though there are many references I can use for comparison. I think Lovecraft used them only once, and while there may be other fictional references out there, I'd be surprised if any of them went into the nitty-gritty of Byakhee flight mechanics.There may or may not be one or two real-world beasts of similar size and capability, but even if someone has statted those out, I'm not sure how they'd compare to a supernatural entity from beyond the stars.

The second is less obvious, and has to do with emperors and the lack of clothes thereof.

People tend to take rules very literally. After all, that's kinda what they're for. They provide structure, and without them the game can flounder in a mire of doubt, misinterpretations, and what-ifs. That doesn't mean you can't have a good time without rules, but it does mean that if you want to attempt anything like a real-world simulation, you need some rules that everyone's going to have to obey.

That said, if I provide a miles per hour figure, people are going to take that figure seriously. They're going to assume that this really is how fast Byakhee fly, because I said so, and I must be right because I wrote the scenario. It could mean that, in future scenarios, Byakhee always fly at X m.p.h. and therefore, although they compared favourably to Great War era aircraft, they don't do well in comparison to Spitfires, and have a lot of trouble keeping up with commercial airliners. That may or may not suit those scenarios, which will have plot demands of their own that may not have anything to do with air combat.

People have a lot of difficulty telling the emperor that he has no clothes; it's why that relevation seldom sees the light of day. Either they spend a lot of time wrangling over trivialities, trying to work out what was "really meant" by a particularly odd rule, or they insist that there has to have been some reason why a rule was written in such-and-such a way, and so it has to be rigidly adhered to. I used to  play a lot of wargames, particularly Napoleonics.  I remember those old rules arguments, but I don't remember them being all that much fun.

In Call of Cthulhu, the best example of this problem is the reading time given in the grimoire statistics. Each book, from the Necronomicon to the King InYellow, has a time, expressed in hours, it takes to read and completely understand. Once you understand the contents, you get the benefits, which could mean increased Mythos knowledge or a chance to learn spells. There's a tangible benefit to completing a book, but there really isn't much of an in-game timekeeping mechanic, nor is there any means of adjusting for character statistics. A dummy with EDU 12 and INT 6 will take just as long to read the Necronomicon as a genius from Harvard, and unless someone's keeping track of days spent in-game, it's easy to lose track of where your character was in his reading schedule.

Yet what few people seem to grok, is that the time listed is a completely arbitrary figure, dreamed up by some writer, who maybe spent all of thirty seconds thinking time working out that number. Perhaps they based it on some real-world measurement. They might have sat down, read War and Peace, timed how long it took, and said to themselves, "right! that's the time it takes to read the Unaussprechlichen Kulten!" Alternatively, they plucked a number from the air and said, "yeah, that's about right. What will I have for lunch?"

Which do you think is more likely? [Hint: my money's on option two.]

For me, if I had to say in-game how fast a Byakhee flies, I'd say it's at least as speedy as the best technology man can put up against it. So whatever warbird happens to find itself sharing airspace with a necrotic horror is no faster than the Byakhee, and might be slower. Since this is a horror game, as a general rule the opposition shouldn't be easily outclassed by technology-reliant mankind. It's a concept you see in movies all the time. If those flamethrowers in Alien had worked really well, it would have been a short movie, and the Alien wouldn't have seemed nearly as menacing. Ergo, the flamethrowers can't work well, or at least not well enough to provide the crew of the Nostromo with an obvious advantage.

That sounds good enough for the scenario, without getting too bogged down in the mechanics of the thing. Ultimately, in a roleplaying system, the rules exist to suppliment the narrative. They don't exist to replace the narrative; it's the difference between a wargame and a storytelling game.

So, how fast is that Byakhee? Just as fast as it needs to be!

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land is the brainchild of Red Wasp Design, a UK-based game studio. It’s a turn-based strategic skirmish wargame based loosely on the writings of H.P Lovecraft, though its gameplay reminds me more of the X-Com series than it does Call of Cthulhu. I’ve had a lot of fun with it this week!

The year is 1915. The Schlieffen Plan hasn’t worked, and Germany’s advance on Paris has stalled. The trenches that are to become symbolic of the Great War have just been dug, and your main protagonist, Captain Hill, is an ordinary soldier fighting on the Front. A mysterious branch of military intelligence sends a boffin, Professor Brightmeer, to help him root out and destroy a particularly insidious foe: Kaul, a nominal ally of the Germans who is using the carnage for his own ends. Brightmeer is joined soon afterwards by Carl Green, martial arts expert, and Emma Gold, a student of Freud, and they join forces with Hill’s platoon to rid the world of Cthulhoid horrors. Together they advance through No-Man’s-Land, at first gathering clues, trying to fathom Kraul’s plan, and later penetrating the villain’s lair to confront him once and for all.

Wasted Land is a strategy game. Your units (Hill, Brightmeer and their allies) have a certain number of Action Points, which they spend moving from place to place, shooting, or performing other actions.  When their turn is done, the enemy have a go, and then the cycle repeats. The victory condition for the scenario changes each time; your goal could be to survive, or to shepherd Brightmeer to the objective so he can study it or blow it up. Win one scenario and you move to the next, until the end is reached. It’s a pulp-action plot complete with moustache-twirling villain but the writing is entertaining with some nice asides from Cornishman Sid Brown, the artillery spotter whose pigeons helped me out of more than one scrape.

Cthulhu tabletop gamers are known for their love of historical accuracy, and Wasted Land does an excellent job. I only caught one duff note, a reference to Salvador Dali’s artwork when, at the time of the scenario, Dali would have been eleven years old. Otherwise Red Wasp did a good job of tying together their timeline.

Veteran tabletop players may be a little surprised by the emphasis on combat. Generally speaking Call of Cthulhu teaches you to run away from, say, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath as they’re extremely dangerous and nigh-on impossible to kill. When three of them turned up at once, my immediate reaction was to order my units to flee. What I ought to have done, as I soon discovered, was order my sniper to shoot holes in the lead monster while bringing my martial artist into close range for a few bayonet-hacks. By the time the campaign is over you’ll have depopulated an entire regiment of Dark Young, as well as many other Mythos beasties.

Sanity is another famous Call of Cthulhu mechanic, mental hit points that run out very quickly when your character faces off against horrors from beyond. In Wasted Land you lose Sanity for encountering horrors, but you also lose them each time you attack one, which means if one unit attacks a zombie three times they lose three doses of Sanity, and then they’ll lose more when the zombie attacks them. When Sanity runs out either the unit is paralyzed for a turn and loses all their Action Points, or goes manic. Mania gives them a double dose of Action Points, but at the end of their manic period they’ll fall unconscious and die unless someone helps them. Mania can be a godsend, but when your sniper, heavy weapons guy and martial arts expert all go manic in the same round you do start to feel sorry for the enemy, who’ll be on the receiving end of all that rage.

Sanity can recover naturally after a period of mania or paralysis, but if you want to keep your units in fighting trim then Psychoanalysis will plug those holes in their brains. Gold and Brightmeer start off with this skill, but anyone can learn it. This tends to result in a front line of hardened killers with a support character or two standing directly behind them muttering ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother’ as the undead close in, but needs must!

As a skirmish wargame it has a few flaws, chief among them lack of a Fog of War mechanic. The player always gets to see where everyone is, which does detract from the horror of what is meant to be a horror game. X-Com had this nailed, and it’s a bit puzzling when a series that’s nearly twenty years old has chops that an app released in 2012 doesn’t. The AI sometimes spawns new enemies in inconvenient places, so you can be attacked from the rear while facing off against something nasty, but as a general rule you’ll have plenty of warning of any attack. Most of your opponents are close combat specialists, so your sniper will have a field day as they charge in and your martial artist will enjoy ripping up whatever’s left. This is where Sanity really starts to make a difference, as the last thing you need is a unit in a vital strategic role suddenly lapsing into paralysis.

Another minor gripe is the battlefield itself. It’s beautifully laid out and there are plenty of obstacles, like poison gas or muddy ground, which either slow your units or injure them. However it can be difficult to tell the difference between open ground, which you can shoot over or move through, and an obstacle blocking your line of sight and movement. Level design is also occasionally uninspired, so that what could have been an interesting tangle of barbed wire and poison gas through which you have to choose one of several paths to your objective, becomes instead a linear route the boundaries of which are very clearly marked.   

That said, there were enough challenges here to keep me occupied and I soon learned to tell the difference between terrain types, so my sniper never ended up in a useless location. Though the enemy started to feel slightly outclassed towards the end, the final showdown was appropriately climactic, and were I Field Marshal Haig I’d not have been stingy with the medals afterward!

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being near-perfect, I’d rate Wasted Land as a solid 3. A Fog of War mechanic would have made this a really great game, but it wasn’t to be. Even so, as a tactical skirmish horror game it works very well, and the atmospheric art design really drives home the feel of being on a Great War battlefield. Here’s hoping Red Wasp come out with a sequel sometime soon!