Video Game Review: Spintires 2014

This game is about driving old Soviet-era trucks to deliver lumber through rugged terrain full of mud, rocks and rivers. You have to manoeuvre these huge trucks through whatever nature throws at you. You also can use off-road cars to explore the terrain.

A truck driving across mud

I got it 33% discount on Steam. The first time I logged on to play, my truck got stuck in the mud. You will have to get used to that when you are playing Spintires. This game is about planning to avoid obstacles instead of just gunning the throttle and that's what makes it stand out from other racing games. If you just put you foot down on the throttle you will get stuck in the mud and even if you try to get out you can't as that will cause you to get stuck even deeper.

Another thing that makes it stand out is the physics. You can really feel the trucks weight as it deforms the mud leaving huge tire tracks in it's wake. The water physics is also really good, you can see the truck creating waves in the water. Plus a running river does wash away the truck albeit slowly. You can smash down smaller trees. There is also damage model. The graphics are really beautiful.

A truck pulling a fuel tanker across a lake at night.

A map called "River" in Spintires

You have to deliver trees from the logging camp to the designated point. You have lots of add-ons which do many things such as carrying fuel and repairing other vehicles. The map is quite small but you move so slowly that it feels huge! There are some vehicles scattered around that you might have to repair and refuel to drive again. There are also buildings such as the fuel tank to refill the tank of the truck and the add-ons if it's available. There aren't many vehicles however there are a lot of mods to add more vehicles. At the start of the game you will find that, on the mini-map, most of it is covered by "cloaks" which makes the terrain not visible. You have to go to the centre of the area on the mini-map that the cloak covered in order to reveal the terrain.

Conclusion: This is a very good game with good physics and graphics. However, the direction of the game camera is awful. That's why I give this game a 9/10. Here is the link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiOt7SuHGPM.

Vidoe Game Review : OpenTTD

OpenTTD

This is a COMPLETELY FREE (!) free and open source game based on

 Chris Sawyer's 1995 game Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe. You use buses, trucks, trains, planes and ships to transport passengers and goods over a 32 bit landscape with towns, cities, factories and farms.

You start (by default) in the beginning of 1950 and then you build a transport empire until...forever. You can set AI opponents to compete with. There are random disasters that happen and they can damage your transportation empire. There are new vehicles every few years. There are different landscapes that you can play like sub-artic and Toyland (OH GOSH MY EYES! :o) but they only slightly change the mechanics.

Lastly since there are a lot of mods like one that puts you on the fictional third moon of Pluto called Nix (but that one's not completed yet) and some that enhances AI.

Conclusion: The game is very hard if you don't understand how it works but I still like as you can watch you empire slowly but surely grow. Go to the OpenTTD Wiki to see all the vehicles. I give it a 8 out of 10.

Video Game Review: Spore

Spore is a game where one can create their own creature and control it through the five stages of life in this game. It is quite old now. The storyline is that a meteorite crashes into the planet that you have selected and one of the fragments sinks into the sea. There your cell hatches and the game begins. This game does not have an ending. However, the main objectives of the entire game is to survive, get to the centre of the universe that you live in and defeat the Grox (you can also make friends with them but all the other species will instantly declare war on you and attack you).

A cell

The first stage is the cell stage where you have to eat plants or meat to survive and level up. You also collect cell parts either by finding meteorites or killing cells with cell parts that you do not have. You put these new parts on by accessing the creature creator. This stage is relatively easy.

A creature

 After that stage comes the Creature stage. Here you develop legs (though it is not necessary) and you do the same as the previous stage in the sense that you keep collecting new parts for your creature, eating and killing animals. However unlike the previous stage you can befriend animals and that will also get you new parts. If you attack an egg or a baby belonging to another animals nest then they will instantly attack you and hate you. There is a chance of your family migrating to another nest. The creature creator then lets you put parts on and weapons on like the previous stage. However, now you can modify your creature in 3D. This mode is a little bit trickier as some animals are hard to kill and they will attack you even if you do not provoke them. There are a more variety of animals such as epics that are huge creatures that can kill you in one attack and rogues who very easily provoked but if made friendly there are a useful friend when you want to kill an epic.

A tribe

Then after that comes the tribal stage where you hunt animals and use weapons to destroy of befriend other tribes. There is a new method of playing which is a more strategy-esc method. You can kill or befriend other tribes. There are still epics although they are easier to kill with a more advanced tribe. Once in this mode you cannot change the appearance of you creature but, your tribes-men can use the aggressive or social parts that you fitted on in the creature stage like spit for example and you can change the clothing of your tribes-man. You can also fit weapons like axes and instruments like maracas to help destroy or impress other tribes. Another feature is domestication where an animal becomes your pet which will protect you from attackers and give you food. Also you can use your special abilities to help yourself. Different ones can be obtained by consequence which depends on your actions before each stage.



A city

After that comes the civilisation stage in this stage you have to conquer the whole world competing against different cities. All other cities are your species. The best thing about this stage is that you can create you own vehicles on land, in the ocean and in the air. Land-based vehicles can only go on land (surprise, surprise!) They are useful for taking over the continent which you start in. The sea-based vehicles can help you capture oil derricks in the sea. Air-based vehicles can travel anywhere but they cannot capture oil derricks. Oil derricks boost your income. You control cities and you can put houses (which increases the amount of vehicles you can have and doubles the effects of the other buildings), factories (which increases income but lowers happiness) and entertainment buildings (which increase happiness). This mode is quite easy

Grox

And finally we have the space stage! You have to build an empire by placing colonies on planets. This stage does not end. You have a space ship that has a lot of tools such lasers and machines that makes creatures epics. You can buy more tools from empires but their costs vary depending on the type of empire. You can make friends with empires and eventually buy their solar systems or you can take over the planet and make them surrender. When you travel to the centre of the galaxy you will find the Grox who like the epics will attack you upon sight. Eventually you will reach the centre of the universe and find a mysterious being.

Conclusion: Spore is a great game and it has a lot of content. So much that I have only covered about 20% of the whole game! If you want to find out more then go to the Spore wiki. I give this game a 10/10.

Video Game Review : Blockade Runner Alpha

Blockade Runner



To me this game is like the space version of Minecaft. This game is made by Zan MGT which is a studio started by six siblings called Zack, Aaron, Nathan, Micah, Gabriel and Terah. If you put the first letters of each of their names together you get Zan MGT. You build space ships with blocks and then put weapons and armour plating for protection.


There are six different types of building materials : Frame, Plating, Interior, Glass, Parts and Decor. There are also different tools that help you build your spaceship faster like symmetry. There are different types of weapons. My personal favourite is the cannon which is like a machine gun. There is a multiplayer that is quite like Minecraft in the case that they both use servers and a solo mode. There is not a lot I can write about as it is still under development.

The following picture shows debris from a asteroid. When you break ice or rock blocks, you get round debris but if you brake frame blocks the debris will be very sharp.





Debris from a asteriod

 I have built three supporting spaceships. But, I am still building the mothership. My spaceships are black with a red line down the middle and have my insignia which looks like two red squares running diagonally and two white squares running diagonally.

I built the following spaceship as a testbed for weapons and that is why I named it TB-5. You can place any weapon on this ship even the Tai Cannon which is the biggest weapon in the game.



TB-5

I built the following spaceship because I wanted a spaceship that was fast. It is named SLS-50 because it is a small, lightweight-ish ship. It only has one static gun. It is based on the BARC speeder from Star Wars.



SLS-50



I built this spaceship to attack other enemy space ship. This spaceship is the one that I like the most. It has nine static guns, ten X-blasters and two cannons. I named it as a Heavy Fighter because of the large number of weapons it has.





T-10P Heavy Fighter



T-10P Heavy Fighter firing



I did not create the following ship, I just thought it looked nice. It is called Sol. Sol is another word for Sun. It has 12 plasma cannons but when you fire them whilst turning, it shoots itself. It is very shiny when light is reflected on the yellow armour plating.

Sol



I am building the following spaceship to be the flagship of my space armada. It is not finished yet. When it is finished it is going to be the biggest ship I have ever created and the biggest ship of all the user-made spaceships I know of. It is going to have a lot of weapons. The shape of completed spaceship may be completely different from it's current shape.


CR-10 BL-class MOTHERSHIP

Summary: I like this game because you can build enormous spaceships with a million weapons and you can let your creativity run wild. Also the price is only $10. What I do not like about this game is that it sometimes crashes because it is still in development and it focuses too much on multiplayer. I give this game a 8/10.

My first post

Hello world! This is my first blog post so here it goes!

IL-2 Sturmonvik 1946

Picture Source: www.amazon.co.uk

This game is set in World War II and is about shooting planes and nothing else.The name of the game is IL-2 Sturmonvik, which comes from a plane called the Ilyushin IL-2.

Ilyushin IL-2 (photo source: wikimedia common)

The title ''sturmonvik'' comes from the Russian word ''shturmovik'' which means ground-attack aircraft which the Il-2 was. The plane on the cover of the game (Top photo) is an Mig-9. The Il-2 series game is developed by the 1C company which is one of the largest interdependent Russian software developers. The 1C company also made Il-2 Sturmonvik: Birds of Prey. I played the demo of Birds of Prey on my Xbox 360 and it was great! The graphics are not that good but who cares when you get to blow up Me-323s (German transport plane) with my personal favourite plane the P-80 Shooting Star (American jet fighter) over Russia in heavy rain. 

P-80 Shooting Star in a Russian Air Force livery shooting an Me-323

 The plane which has the best weapons in the game is the Ta-183 (experimental German jet fighter) which has 4 auto-cannons!

Ta-183 shooting it's MK-108 auto-cannon

This game is surprisingly cheap at just £4.67 on Amazon. Once I tried to take on 16 ace Japanese Zero fighter planes with a Supermarine Seafire. Well, what do you think happened? A Japanese plane fired at me and one of the bullets seemed to hit my engine. I wasn't able to restart my engine and I didn't have enough time to eject and parachute down so my plane crashed into the water and I died. However, I did manage to shoot one of the Zero fighter planes down and I had a lot of fun playing the game!

Summary: The up-side is that it is cheap, fun and brilliant. The down-side of this game is that you have to wait quite some time to get to the actual dog fighting and the graphics aren't that good. I give this game an 8/10.