Nothing Wins the Justice

The Wonderful End of the World:

The Wonderful End of the World is an unashamed riff on Katamari Damacy. The objective of the game is to run around absorbing items smaller than you in order to grow. So that you can absorb bigger things, up until the point where you reach the levels goal.

My biggest complaint with respect to Katamari Damacy is that I find the controls awkward and relatively hard to use. The Wonderful End of the World's control scheme I find much easier to use, though you become slower as you become more massive.

That is not to say that there are not fault. The Wonderful End of the World has no display options, it has a single resolution 1024 x 768 and no windowed mode or AA options. This is really irritating seeing as I try to avoid playing games that cannot either be set to my desktop resolution or played in windowed mode due to using a dual monitor set up. You screw with my primary monitor res and the secondary monitor gets affected.

The game engine also makes it a little difficult at times to see when the point you are able to absorb some objects, there were times where I was able to absorb objects I expected to be too big, and yet bounced off smaller objects. The game also doesn't let you know how much progress you have to the level goal during the level.

That said, the game is $9.99 on Steam and is very entertaining. I was actually given this game by a friend who really likes Katamari Damacy.

Dawn of War II:

I've only played through some of the single player of Dawn of War II thus far but the game has changed a fair bit in style from the first game.

The first change is that, whilst the game still uses squads rather than single units, the squads have scaled down in size so the feel is much more small scale than the original and for the single player the game has abandoned base and unit building altogether. You select the 4 squads you plan upon using for a game and then you deploy them for the current mission.

The single player campaign is build around an RPG/RTS hyprid approach, your squads gain XP during each deployment by killing enemies and completing objectives, more XP is gained for killing all of the enemies/without losing any squads/completing the mission quickly. Missions have wargear rewards and occasionally enemies will drop wargear that you can then loot.

Between deployments you can deploy this gear onto your troops and level them up focusing between health, melee, ranged and energy/gear based special abilities. Allowing you to unlock further uses for your troops and gear.

The game lets you play through the campaign mode with another person in a co-op mode, where each player controls 2 of the units, so you can have one person deal with range and another with melee or use a mix, whichever works best for you.

The game has new content being released for it over time, there was already one major update "There is Only War" which made balance tweaks and added 8 new muliplayer maps and they have announced another "The Last Stand" which will add a new multiplayer game mode.

One thing that is also worth mentioning, DoWII uses both Steam and Games for Windows Live. Even if you buy it in a store, you have to register it with Steam, which means you don't need the disc anymore, but also means you cannot sell it on, and in order to play the game you need to have a Live account. As I already have both of these things and not had difficulty with either this has not bothered me, but I can understand it bothering others.

In typical THQ fashion, Dawn of War II is $59.99 on steam if you are using an Australian credit card, and $39.99 if you using a US credit card. I bought the game during a weekend sale when they released There is Only War.

Unreal:

I never played Unreal near when it came out. I recall it as being the Crysis of its time, built for PCs that weren't really in cirulation yet. I did end up playing Unreal Tournament and really enjoyed that especially the assault mode.

It comfortably supports being set to 1920x1200, and the game has a lot of elements that I associate with more modern first person shooters. There are notes and screens with text you can read, which allow for you to learn more about the world and the narrative rather than just running through the levels trying to find the exit.

The game is fairly challenging, enemies dodge and on occasion feign death. The second enemy you meet also dual wields rocket launchers which I feel is most unfair. As it is Unreal, all weapons have some form of alternate fire mode, the game levels are large and wide ranging and whilst the game engine shows its age, the levels are still reasonably attractive.

All of the weapons you know from Unreal Tournament are there (save for the redeemer) but with a different form and model. This can lead to moments of realisation as to why your gun seems ineffective as it is the shock rifle equivalent, you should be using it differently.

Unreal Gold is $9.99 on Steam and Good Old Games, and you can get a pack with all of the Unreals and Unreal Tournaments for $39.99 from Steam. I bought mine during a weekend sale in March of last year.

Well, this concludes the series about games I played during my Random Games week, I still use the script fairly often as it is a quick way to choose a game to play when I don't sit down with something in mind. I'm down to 101 finishable games in my list, the key difference though is if I get a game I don't really want to play right now, I ignore it and pick something else.

Right now though I'm probably going to be focusing upon Champions Online for the next while, I'm using the name Ranneko on there.

GrubLord: Maybe it's askin' a lot, but I'd love for you to do a brief review of Champions Online, too.