Tag: Strategic »

Having a barbeque can often be tricky. Not only is it important to stockpile enough food and beverages, there's also the matter of actually preparing it all. And then there are the pests. Flies and mosquitoes are irritating enough, but Go Home Dinosaurs takes it to the next level with Pteranodons, T-Rexes, and a whole menagerie of other Jurassic (and Cretaceous, and Triassic, and so on) party crashers.

I could try to summarize Go Home Dinosaurs as a tower defense game, and to an extent that's accurate, but there's a bit more to it than that. Yes players have to construct automated defenses and attempt to fend off the dino hordes using limited resources, and yes the nuisances follow a set path, but terrain and character placement is also a major factor. First off, players are in control of a sort of lead gopher. He chucks rocks for an okay amount of damage and has some good range, but his best function is gathering coconuts that are needed to build stuff. Once enough have been collected it's then a matter of dragging a card - one of several pre-selected at the start of the level from a library, a-la Plants Vs. Zombies - onto the field. The catch is that each structure has a specific shape, not unlike Tetris pieces. It both allows from some pretty devastating combos when two complimentary bits of ordinance are placed near each other, and forces players to change up their strategy since some levels simply will not accommodate certain choices.

I found virtually every one of Go Home Dinosaurs' quirky hybridized elements to be fantastic. Having direct control over that one gopher leads to some exciting moments spent bouncing between coconut collecting and doing direct damage. The resource collection and card management also do a fantastic job of keeping players from relying on a single strategy and requires that they really pay attention to the terrain. And I absolutely love how the puzzle-like structure placement feeds in to the terrain strategy.

The only thing about Go Home Dinosaurs that bugs me is the shop. It's possible to collect lots of coins during most of the levels, then turn around and spend them to unlock temporary power-ups that can be equipped and used much like regular defense cards, but I never really used them much. They just feel like a pointless option. Not that there's anything wrong with giving players a choice to develop strategies around these items if they'd like, but for me it just felt unnecessary.

Going in to Go Home Dinosaurs I was half-expecting a cute but typical tower defense game. Turns out it's anything but. Okay, it's still cute, but it's far beyond typical. It's also well worth checking out.

A number of players have been able to enjoy Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances in all its meticulously strategic glory for almost a full year now, but the experience has been tied specifically to web browsers. That’s a problem that will cease to exist in the near future.

Fans of the series should note that this isn’t a typical C&C. It’s not real-time strategy and its not divided into small half-hour long skirmishes. Each of the game’s 50,000 (that’s “fifty-thousand”) player servers houses a gigantic circular world map. Players begin on the outside and attempt to fight their way to the middle, which is far easier said than done. Simply reaching the center of the map can take months of planning and teamwork, and then there’s the matter of holding on to the bases that sit within those areas. Comparing this to the original series is sort of like comparing checkers to chess.

Tiberium Alliances is an incredibly player-driven experience. Hence the “Alliances.” NOD and GDI exist pretty much in name only here as player-formed groups can and will consist of both. Once these alliances have been established it’s up to the participants to figure everything out. Who wants to play the heavy hitter? Who wants to act as support? When will so-and-so be on so that you can coordinate an attack against a nearby enemy outpost in order to take it over and gain its bonuses for your alliance? There’s a ridiculous amount of strategy to be found if players are willing to travel deep enough into the rabbit hole.

Combat is also a rather involved affair with specific units gaining an automatic advantage over specific defenses and vice-versa. By the same token, different buildings within a base have different levels of importance in a fight. The Defense Facility, for example, will repair other buildings over time. Take it out and the base will take a while to get back to full strength. Or there’s always the Construction Yard. Kill that and the base is toast regardless. Of course not all bases can be overrun in a single attack, which is why it’s vital to communicate with other alliance members and really plan complex maneuvers ahead of time.

The overall experience is largely unchanged from the browser-based version, with the exception of a new touch-based interface. However, once the iOS version is released Tiberium Alliances will be totally cross-platform with players able to manage their bases and assemble armies on their computer, then immediately jump in where they left off on their mobile devices if need be. Which will be a boon for any serious players as the community is looking pretty intense and involved. In a good way.

Anyone interested in checking out Tiberium Alliances can do so right now through their web browser, of course. But in another month or so the entire life devouring, free-to-play strategy monster will go cross platform. And then there won’t be anywhere left to hide.

Did the Battleship movie get you all pumped up and ready to take on some hostile aliens? Yeah, me neither. In fact it was fairly unimpressive. Classic Battleship, on the other hand, is all kinds of alright. EA Mobile’s upcoming Battleship Airstrike looks to sit somewhere in the middle, containing the spirit of the classic board game and coupling it with a faster-paced asynchronous multiplayer experience.

Imagine a typical game of Battleship. Each player takes their turn one shot at a time, trying to find their opponent and sink their fleet before they meet a similar fate. Battleship Airstrike ratchets the formula up a bit by allowing players to take multiple shots per turn. In addition to that, special limited use shots can be purchased with money earned through play in order to gain some possible advantages. Advantages such as destroying a ship with a single hit or deploying a kind of artillery sonar that doesn’t cause damage but will reveal vessel locations within a certain number of tiles.

Once a turn is completed - which may consist of several strategic bombings and even paying for repairs on your own damaged (damaged, not destroyed) ships - it’s all submitted to the servers and the opposition is alerted. Typical asynchronous multiplayer stuff, really. It’s more the mold-breaking multi shot turns and special shells (not to mention the possibility of repairs!) that make Battleship Airstrike enticing.

Battleship Airstrike should be out sometime this fall.