Nothing Wins the Justice

Well guys, I’m about to make the challenge a bit easier for you, I’m going to eliminate 6 of the screenshots here with my first 3 mini-reviews

Eets

Eets is a puzzle game that I bought on Steam during a weekend sale in November of last year. It is still available, but it is currently $9.99US.

The objective in Eets is to get your main guy across from the starting point to the puzzle piece found in any level. The game is somewhat like The Incredible Machine games in that the player is provided with an almost complete level with a few components missing and the puzzle is to determine where the components you have been provided goes.

Where this differs from The Incredible Machine is that there are some items that the player directly interacts with, some things trigger on hit, but others the player is required to trigger manually, this can lead to more efficient solutions being available if the player times things just so. The game even rewards you with an in game achievement for beating a challenge with 1, 2, 3+ fewer objects than you were provided.

The game is split up into 7 different worlds, including the intro, each bar the last introducing new items and techniques available to the player. The last brings all of them together to offer the broadest range of puzzles.

Eets surprisingly came up 3 times during the week, so I went from replaying the early stuff having lost my save game at some stage to unlocking every single world and having done all of the tier 3 challenges in the final area. I would recommend picking this game up if you see it on sale one weekend.

Heroes of Might and Magic V:

I first got into the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise with the second game. I still in fact have the manuals and reference card for that game and its sequel. I never did get around to trying Heroes IV though.

Heroes V is the first Heroes game that was not created by New World Computing. It breaks with the previous continuity, going for straight out fantasy and also moving into 3D. Allowing the player to zoom in and out, rotate the camera and all that jazz at the cost of looking not quite as neat as some of the old sprites were.

Other than that, there is not so much different between this game and Heroes 1-3. They added skill specialisations of which you have a limited number and if you look up prereqs you can get your heroes some nifty and powerful abilities by careful skill suggestions. But these are not so influential that you have to play with a helpful website open. I would recommend this to anyone who has played the earlier games and would like to play more of it. The complete pack is currently $40 on Steam though, which includes 2 expansions. I bought it during a weekend sale on Steam back at the end of June.

SiN 1:

SiN is an old game that I remember reading about in PC Review before it came out. It was going to have decisions you make in earlier levels affect later levels. I have not managed to play it long enough for this aspect to make itself known. I’ve only managed to play through the first few levels. It is a first person shooter using the Quake II engine and sadly does not support Widescreen, so I pumped up the res and played it in windowed mode.

As it stands thus far it seems pretty standard, you do need to interact with opponents corpses at times in order to loot them, rather than all their useful stuff falling onto the ground beside them. It’s been an acceptable game thus far but I mostly found the introduction of the main villainess very silly. The screenshot provided shows her, but does not capture the jiggle they provided with her, now the Quake II engine may have been shiny and advanced in its day but it was not a great engine for aesthetically pleasing ladies. Good gravy the effect is not sexy it is just makes me roll my eyes.

I obtained SiN sometime ago when I purchased the first and only episode of the episodic series on Steam in July of 2008 when it was on weekend sale on Steam. That pack is currently $9.99US. It may also be worth noting that ADV Films made an anime movie based upon this game, called Sin: The Movie. SiN 1 showed up twice during the week.

GrubLord: Would you say Heroes V is worth the buyin'?

It sorta confuses me... I thought the Heroes games were, like, "Build Settler (50 turns)", not "Catapult hits wall for 50 damage". What kind of a game is it, anyways?

Ranneko: It's a turn based strategy game, where fights are done with a turn based tactical set up for combat.

The screenshot I provided was for the combat. It differs from Civ or even say Master of Magic in the reliance of Heroes for armies, each hero can be pictured as a mobile army container. The resource generation and cities are also predetermined, you do not found cities, instead you capture and develop them. Lastly nothing takes multiple turns to build, they simply have a resource cost, and each town can only create one structure a turn. Creatures are recruited but only show up in their dwellings at the start of the week.

I would recommend the games, but if you aren't after spending $40US on it, you could go to Good Old Games, where the first 3 heroes games are available for $10US each, with at least the soundtrack as extras.

GrubLord: This sounds interesting... certainly a goer for NerdFest, if it pans out as a fun enough game.

If it'll give us some turn-based goodness that isn't Civ4 at NF, it's worth any ol' price it may charge us.

RJorb: I may be mistaken, Grub, but I believe you and me tried a HOMM multiplayer at one point, and it was horribly buggy. I think it may even have been this HOMM.

That said, I wouldn't rule out giving it another shot. I was always a fan of the HOMM games, and was very disappointed when our multiplayer attempts failed so miserably. Maybe they've patched it good?

GrubLord: Precisely what I was thinking...