The World of Mystic Wiz: Quiz RPG [iOS, Android]

What a name, what an odd game. It's a freemium quiz RPG and it's actually pretty fun. You need to successfully answer trivia style questions in order to do combat damage to the enemy monsters with your spirits. Spirits are collected in card form and can be enhanced or evolved into more powerful spirits. It's an odd mix but it definitely makes it unique... also my code is 7UAGWDVD, add me!

The game gives you your standard story driven quest mode and an online battle mode where you still battle the A.I. but compete to see who can beat them in the shortest number of turns. The questing features an odd but reasonably interesting story which includes your standard rise to greatness. The name of the game takes its title from your master Wiz, like a lot of Japanese games on phones and tablets poor translation is a feature here.

The questions vary widely in difficulty from extremely easy to ridiculously hard. They do offer an interesting mix of questions with some of them even being Australia related. However, mostly they are American and this can make it difficult for anyone who isn't obsessed with Americanism. In addition some questions have been matched with the wrong answer set giving you some bizarre answers.

The pay wall is pretty good in this, it won't get in your way too much. It does have a regenerating MP bar that you use to fight battles but I've only used this up after playing for a long time and it regenerates quickly anyway. The prices are astronomical so I wouldn't bother paying anything for this game, why they didn't introduce something decent is beyond me. You earn new cards by playing the game or invoking which can be done via friend points or by using gems. Using gems gets you better results and you earn a decent amount in game. It costs you five gems for one spin but they only give you two gems for a dollar, that seems quite harsh. Sometimes I wonder if freemium games developers don't want to make money.

As I mentioned before you can enhance and evolve your spirits to make them more powerful. Enhancing is just leveling up and it requires you to sacrifice cards and spend in game money to do so. Evolving is more or less the same but this time you need special evo cards, it will cost you more money and you will get the next level of card. Evolving is a little bit tedious as you will need to have a max level spirit card, then all the right evo cards and it only results in you power up your card one step. Some of your cards do have special powers though and making these more powerful is quite a boon. Powers include, doing a type of damage to all opponents, healing your team and knocking out an incorrect answer in the quiz.

I had a lot of fun with this game and it was very nearly an 8 but there are a bunch of things that let it down. Some questions repeat too frequently, poor translation and the odd bug, not to mention the overpriced in game store are the main culprits. Still I think you can have a lot of fun with this game and if you are looking for something a bit different you should grab it 7.7/10.

What game should I buy?

What game should I buy? Is a thing I hear a lot of voices say in my head and today I am here to answer it!

Total War: Rome II [Windows] - It's so buggy at the moment I wouldn't even pirate it. It's gonna need a month before it's solid, so use that time to make yourself the new gaming rig you're going to need to run it on max.

Prison Architect [Windows, Mac OS]- The game has been released in alpha form for nearly a year now, surely it has entered beta. Nope, still in alpha, with over 7 million dollars worth of sales you would think they would hire a bunch of people to get the game out, nope to that too. Get it on sale, or don't, like Minecraft this game will never be fully finished and by the time it is, you'll be over it.

Space Hulk - [Windows, Mac OS] It's so clunky it makes board games seem like highly efficient calculation machines. I played it and then forgot it even existed. Instead, get the board game and a friend, spend all your time painting the miniatures and discussing tactics. Or don't, get addicted to crack and copulation, wind up famous on Big Brother and regret it for the rest of your life.

Probably don't buy any games right now. I mean you can get Star Wars pinball free on your idevice; sure some things will shit you about it but it's free and Star Wars, so you can't complain too much. GTA V and Watch Dogs will be out soon, so you should save up enough for two copies of those, one for you and one for me to review. Thanks!

0 A.D.

0 A.D. is a free game made by a community of volunteers and is an Age of the Empires style RTS. The game is only in alpha but they have a pretty solid build available for download on their site. The project still has a long way to go but amazingly you can already play it on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. I've tested it on Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.7.5, here's what I found.

Both versions seemed to run equally well, however, the game has yet to be optimised so when a lot of stuff starts to happen, the game starts to chug. The thing that strikes you at first is how beautiful the game is. The landscapes are incredible and most of the unit models are pretty good too, they just requiring some touching up here and there. Still it's pretty good for a community run project.

There are a lot of little bugs and features missing at the moment. One of the most annoying things is that workers will get stuck on each other and do this silly little dance back and forth, unable to pass one another. Like in Age of Empires  you can queue up units to come out in one big go. You shift click on the units you want and that will increase the number by five, you can keep doing this until you let go of shift and it will plop out 5, 10, 15 etc. The downside to this though, is that there are no warnings for having reached your population cap and this technique can really chew through your allowance. There are also no battle notifications as of yet either so it can be a bit confusing when you come under attack.

The gameplay is a lot like Age of Empires but there are a few differences. One thing I found whilst learning about these differences, is that even set to the easiest difficulty the AI is quite difficult. They always manage to find the one weak spot in my defences and raid my base. The first time I won a  game against the AI, I found the combat to be a little lacklustre. Skirmishers will run off in tangents firing at foes who get too close and because the game chugs when there is so much on screen it makes it very hard to manage.

The game clearly needs a lot of work but still, I am quite impressed with what they've done. It's the kind of project I will check back on from time to time to see how they are progressing. They are also always keen to have people work on the project so there is always that avenue to pursue, if you're interested. It's well worth checking out and I can't wait to see how it is when they enter the beta phase.

Win Total War: Rome II on Kotaku

Head over to Kotaku to win one of 10 copies of Total War: Rome II. All you need to do is grab an image of a dudesman out of the provided picture, then have a rant about him or her. Here is the shot I took for my entry.

In App Purchasing Done Wrong

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 and Real Racing are both good examples of poor decisions when it comes to in app. purchasing but what do they do wrong exactly? Poor value for money is one of the key problems, nerds like to feel they are getting a good deal and these games don't really convey that feeling. There are often too many confusing options, and what the usefulness is of your purchase is not clearly laid out. Too many "currencies" I'll also look at what other games have done right when it comes to in app purchases.

What does buying a $0.99 app get you these days? Quite a lot actually and that is a problem for a lot of in app purchases. Especially if you have bought a previous version of the game, you know what you got for your money. If you paid between 1 and 5 dollars for a whole game, you aren't going to be happy spending 10 dollars and just getting a small bonus and some useless in game cash. It's partly a psychological thing, I mean you got the whole game for free why pay so much for these little extras? The best example I have of this, is that the original Plants Vs. Zombies, will set you back $10.49 for a computer version, yet the free sequel wants to charge you $4.49 just for the use of a special plant!

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 is probably the best example of confusing in app. purchases. Unless you have played the original game the value of a lot of the things you can buy will be totally unclear. How useful is a Squash or Jalapeno in the game? I would say these types of items are not very useful at all, certainly not for the price but that is because I have completed the original game many times. Often these games want to give specials and bundle deals that are more attractive to the user, than some of the standard options. That's fine but usually this confuses the deals and what they come with exactly, is made unclear. Again this comes back to a value for money thing and the value really isn't there.

Real Racing 3 is a great example of too many types of currencies. It  uses "Real Dollars", "Gold", and requires you to have "Drive" to enter certain races. Real Dollars (not to be confused with actual money) are used to buy in game cars and upgrades, that makes sense and is fine I think but then gold will allow you to speed up things like your car being repaired. Plus you are going to need drive to enter special types of races, it's all a little too much and Real Racing isn't necessarily the worst offender out there. I think companies like this as it adds to the confusion over value but that is exactly why most people hate it. It's much simpler when you can purchase one currency and then use that on whatever you want to rather than being forced to spend your money all over the place.

In app. purchasing is just one option available to videogame companies and it isn't always the best way to go. Sometimes though companies do get it right, here is a look at some examples. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol got a lot of things right with it's in app purchasing and the main thing they did, was to give you a pack at a discounted price. The packs contain all the Aces for example or the campaign pack had all of the missions besides the already discounted British Pack. That was another great thing they did, give you a whole campaign for just a dollar. It felt like good value and due to the gameplay being so excellent it was good value. The Walking Dead also had a great system, they gave you the first episode free, then you could buy one episode at a time, or buy the whole pack for a discounted rate. It was a simple and clean no bullshit approach. Ultimately I think it is in the companies interest to make a clean system that the user will appreciate, not only does it help their review score but I know personally I am much more likely to buy from a company that does this well.

Papers, Please Review

This game encapsulates the drudge and monotony of working in a clerical job a little too well at times but it does also add a lot of twists and turns to bring in some excitement. The constant pressure to do a good job and make enough money to support your family, is enough to turn anyone to a little corruption...

It's amazing how much the game can convey with such a simple art style, in fact it only adds to the gameplay rather than detracts. Part of the reason simple art looks so good in this, is because it's set in a fictitious Soviet block country, during the 1980's. An art style like this really makes the little things stand out, for example, guards are normally blue in colour but your friend the guard, he is in green. The simplicity of the art style really conveys the depressing nature of the job but little things, like knowing your friend the green guard wants to speak to you, gives you hope.

The gameplay is a strange mix of absolute boredom, as you process yet another application, to the exhilarating adrenaline rush, of shooting your first terrorist. It's sort of more social experiment than game at times and it makes me feel sorry for all the lowly people getting their work done in a government position (well at least until I remember they get each and every public holiday off). I want to come back and find all the different endings to this game, yet at the same time I can't play very many game days, without wanting to stop. Like you're proverbial average job, it's tedious, frustrating and can't be done well as you tire

It's a great game, it's a terrible game, if the premise interests you at all, I would say it is well worth the mere $10USD admission price, even if you are just curious. It's never going to be for everyone but then that is the beauty of indie games 7.8/10.

Should You Buy Shadowrun Returns?

Shadowrun Returns is an interesting little Kickstarter project, that holds its roots in a pen and paper roleplaying game. If you have been looking for a Sci-Fi RPG and you are keen to make your own content using the editor, I say go and buy it right now. It's only $20 USD and if this is your thing, it is well worth the price. For the rest of us it's best to hold of until a Steam sale comes along. Let's take a look at why.

The game lacks content. Right now all you get is a fairly short adventure, people are reporting it is taking them from 8 to 13 hours depending on the difficulty they are playing. It's not a bad little adventure, in a way it's nice that it is short but it has no replayability, due to it being so linear. People are working on their own content now and there are a few short adventures already out but most of them are still in the test phase. Which brings me to the next point.

The editor is powerful but difficult to use, I'd recommend checking out the tutorial videos here first. It's fine if this is what interests you but for the average gamer it is going to take way too long to learn and I can't really recommend it. Like I mentioned before, in a few months time the game will probably be on sale on Steam and users would have generated some great content for it. 

The game has all of the core mechanics sussed out and your characters are very flexible in what they can be upgraded to do, there is just not that much of anything to do. Jacking into the matrix is cool, you basically run about blasting programs as a virtual version of yourself. There are heaps of skills and abilities to learn, like magic, using throwing weapons etc. but there is little need to know most of these things at the moment. There is a huge system running at the core of this game that should even make the pen and paper adventurers happy but without content it feels a little lacklustre.

So the verdict is, buy it now if you have to, otherwise wait until it's on sale and there is a lot more user created content.  Harebrained Schemes have stated they are adding an extra graphical pack for those who want to make their own adventures and there is already a strong community around it, so it's just a matter of time 7.5/10.

The Problem with Steam, or, Why the Steam Box won't Kill the Console.

There seems to be a huge amount of love for Valve and Steam. Although the Steam sales are quite nice, a lot of this love seems unwarranted. Steam is a bug riddled, archaic and bandwidth hogging piece of software, that hasn't had a true overhaul in its lifetime. Steam may be the best at what it does but it wouldn't take much to topple it from its position, especially if they don't have something planned for it soon. Some people have claimed that the Steam Box will destroy videogame consoles as we know them but of this I am sceptical too.

Firstly Steam crashes more than any other program I own. It doesn't matter whether I'm in Mac OS or Windows and I imagine Linux is much the same, Steam will find a way to stop working. It doesn't crash everyday but I can't think of a program that is less reliable than it. Next the fix for every Steam issue according to the forums seems to be uninstall and reinstall it. This is one of the reasons the Steam Box will never kill consoles. A console needs to be a much more reliable experience (no Xboxes don't count), a console never expects you to fiddle about with a .ini file just to get a game to work, nor reinstall its key piece of software.

Steam loves to update, it will update your games but more than that it loves to update itself constantly. You can't stop it from updating itself and if it doesn't want to let you in because it is updating there is nothing you can do about it. Steam doesn't even officially support background updating. When you are playing a game you have to get out of the game, right click on the game you want updated tell it to pause, then tell it to resume updating. The Wii U got a firmware update allowing for background updating where is the patch for Steam?

Steam lacks options. You have the choice between auto-playing videos or having auto-play turned off. I prefer auto-play turned off, so when I click on a video I expect it to play with sound. Why is the sound muted every time when auto-play is off? It makes no sense and why is there no option to stop this? Also it is basically just a glorified browser so why can't I have multiple tabs open? I want to be looking at a couple of games at a time instead of clicking on one, going back, clicking on the next etc. Steam is dated in this regard and it makes it very slow.

I hope the Steam Box brings with it a large update to Steam, as it is in dire need of a refresh. It was once cutting edge but now even Nintendo seem more up to date. The new card system is stupid and if they thought that was going to help them, I think they are in for a big shock. It's time to fix the boring stuff, make it a solid, reliable platform and most importantly give the gamers what they want.

Company of Heroes 2

Company of Heroes 2 was a tough game for me to review. Its intense, complex action is a load of fun, especially with friends but things like the AI bugs and the relentless march of DLC, take away some of it's lovable-ness.

The campaign's story and cutscenes are terrible but I had a lot of fun playing the missions. It starts you out fairly basically and gets you up to speed if you haven't played the previous game. I found the middle of the campaign was a little boring, due to the game throwing similar missions at you in quick succession but then the final few missions mix it up and got me interested again. Things like racing against the clock, or commanding a team of snipers sent to assassinate officers, help make the campaign interesting. The theatre of war mode expands on the campaign with a lot more single player scenarios and even a couple of co-op missions. These are great fun and well worth playing through as they teach you a lot of skills for playing online.

There are a bunch of things that let the game down and keep it from feeling like the true sequel it should be. The game was released a little too soon and there are a bunch of sloppy bugs that really show this. There are odd graphical issues with objects disappearing and things like the repair icon missing at times. There are also a bunch of AI issues that are just straight up disappointing. Just after an update to AI I played a 2v2 game with an AI partner. I watched as the AI forgot to build the Infanterie Kompanie that is so crucial to the Germans and then it sent out it's squad to capture a sector only to retreat it back before it finished capturing. I can't believe how dumb it can be. Path finding features a lot of the old problems you would be used to from the original. Retreating units seem to take odd paths at time, especially when they have added the jump the fence ability to squads, why not implement this to retreating? Make it new interesting and work well. None of this is game shattering but a lot of it is problems from the old game. These should not be a sequel, not one that wants to score highly anyway.

Floating binoculars?

Multiplayer is the best part of this game. Some people love the intensity and focus of a 1v1 match but I prefer the chaos of the 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 matches. It's hard to explain the pure joy I have experience in this game but perhaps it is best exemplified by a 4v4 match I played online with a friend. So much happened in that match that it's hard to remember but there are a few key moments that stand out. Telling my friend not to send in his scout car to a heavily defended point on the map and watching it explode and everyone inside in one second. Ramming the massive German Elefant tank with my T34 and watching as my team picked it apart afterwards was the most exciting moment in the match for me. But the greatest part was that we had not taken a single victory point from the enemy until we were down to 70 points. We managed to fight back and take all 500 points with out losing another. It's the stories you get and the fact that you can fight back that makes this game so good.

There is a lot of value in this game, it gives you a campaign, the theatre of war mode and multiplayer modes but it has taken some odd turns. They have spent a lot of time on making DLC for the game a lot of which was available as part of pre-ordering the game but if you missed, out or didn't buy the collectors edition, there is plenty that Relic and Sega want to charge you for. I think instead of selling you paint jobs for your vehicles at outrageous prices they, could have focused on the included content a lot more. The game could have launched with another nationality or two to play as, it seems a little undercooked in this day and age. They haven't even explored any of the other Axis powers such as the Italians of the Finns. They will probably make a series of expansions for the game that include all of this but it almost makes it worth waiting for the complete boxed set to come out. By then you will own a PC that can handle this power hungry beast of a game.

All around it is a solid title but there are a bunch of disappointments. I know Relic went through a lot with the collapse of THQ and subsequently being bought up by Sega but I think they could have chosen to release this a few months later, to fix a bunch of these issues. If you liked the originals or like any form of tabletop warfare set from the invention of tanks, to say about 40,000 AD, you will like this game, it just doesn't have the widespread appeal they could have achieved with a more concerted effort 8/10.

Infinity Blade II for a dollar

Infinity Blade II is a dollar until the end of this month. If you liked the first one, you are bound to like this one. It looks even more detailed than the first one and it's prettier to boot. Parrying is a lot easier this time and the fights are more varied and interesting. It is definitely a worthy sequel.

If you didn't enjoy the first one though you are probably going to hate this. Although it is a better experience the same things are here to annoy. Sometimes it misreads your actions, although usually when this happens to me, it actually does something better than I it meant to. This time 'round they mixed up the fights a bit more, with extra sequences to get a sneaky stab in and so on but you are still basically having the same battles over and over again. If you found this too grindy in the first one it's gonna more or less be the same here despite some slight improvements.

The story has really been fleshed out in this one and it really sucked me in with the little prologue. The whole experience is a much more solid one, it just run so smoothly on my iPhone 5, whereas the original had a lot of bugs and clunkiness. If you can get it at a dollar I say 9/10.

For more info on both games you can see my original review here. It is amazing to see just how much the graphics have improved on a damn phone.