Games I Love: Everspace

Personally I have always loved games set in space almost regardless of their genre (or genres these days!) Everything from space combat games like freespace, real time strategies like Homeworld and grand Strategies like Distant Worlds and Stellaris. So Everspace naturally had my attention helped in large part by the stunning screenshots I was seeing on the way up to it's release also helped by it's unique take on things. It's like Freespace meets FTL with a whole heaping of crafting, resource gathering and exploration thrown in for good measure with some random level generation and permadeath.

Visually stunning areas are the norm in Everspace!

A typical run of Everspace will see you selecting a ship from those you have unlocked so a fresh game would see you with only one (two with the DLC, I can't quite remember.) Spending any credits you earned from previous runs on permanent upgrades like increased loot drops or more weapon slots for particular ships. Then you select your difficulty and boom, you get thrown into one of the most stunning looking space games out there.

The combat and exploration part of the game is the main meat if you will, your goal is to reach the final sector much as in FTL. Within each area there are usually a multitude of things to do most key among them is making sure you have enough fuel to make the jump to the next area to continue your journey. Aside from that there is loot to be found from weapons to improved shields and many more I won't spoil as well as resources and blueprints (which are another permanent progression aspect for your runs.) There are wrecked freighters, bandit bases, hollowed out asteroids and more to poke around in for goodies however there is a catch beyond the outlaws and other enemies you will find. Linger too long in one sector and some mysterious aliens show up to put an end to you meaning you can't take too long in each sector lest you lose precious resources like missiles and the ever important repairing nanobots.

Which brings me onto the combat which just feels very satisfying to me helped in large part by some of the most epic and awesome explosions I have seen in a long time! Each weapon feels like it has it's place and uses, the humble pulse laser is very effective against shields whereas the satisfying gatling enjoys shredding some hulls. You can even apply three upgrades to each weapon should you have the materials and blueprints to do so. Whether you want to make that new beam laser you just found even more adept at stripping shields, fire a bit further or improve it's hull damage to make it more of an all rounder is entirely up to you. Whether it's dodging around an asteroid for cover whilst your shields recharge or finding out you can actually shoot down incoming missiles it's hard not to enjoy the combat in Everspace. Whilst you do have the option of flying in third or first person I personally prefer the extra situational awareness of third person.

See, I told you the explosions were epic!

I think I have only ever fully completed a single run of Everspace but I still have fun with it and often fire it up just to get some epic space action when I don't have time for something more in-depth. My personal favourite ship so far is the gunship simply due to how much firepower it has access to. Sure it loses the regenerating shields of the other ships but when you have that turret firing, a flak cannon thudding away and are spitting missiles out as if they are going out of fashion it makes me so gleeful. When you get that good run going it's just amazing but that brings me to the few flaws the game has, it's fantastic but not perfect.

Not only do you have pilot upgrades but upgrades per ship too!

The first flaw is the lack of an in system map, now I know you can occasionally find a comm array which flags everything in the area for you but still. It would be nice if things were at least tagged in lieu of a map so you could find them again once you have had them in sensor range once.

The second one is a minor issue to me, largely and it's to do with the initial difficulty. Before you have unlocked any of the permanent upgrades it can be hard to progress very far unless you opt as I eventually did to play on easy to get some of them.

Space can be a daunting place...

In light of that any new players who pick this up I have a few tips to potentially help it be less frustrating:

• Play on 'Easy' for your first few runs: Whilst you take a 25% penalty to found credits in general you will usually get further so you'll end up getting more to spend at the start of the next run. This way you will get more unlocks making the higher difficulties more manageable.
• Unlock Pilot Upgrades First: You will just have to trust me on this one, I know it's tempting to open more weapon slots or a new ship but the pilot upgrades apply to all ships. So increased credit loot bonus is best taken early along with improvements to nanobots. More credits means more unlocks, better nanobots means you will get further. 
• Don't hoard consumables and missiles: I know I used to do the same, not using things just in case I need them later. Best to just use them as and when you need them whilst you are learning the ins and outs of the game. 

I need bigger guns for this..

In conclusion Everspace to me is an awesome space combat game and some of the most stunning visuals I have seen, the explosions and nebula effects are especially good. It is one of my more recent favourites and I think I'll be getting many more hours of enjoyment out of it on top of the many I have already gotten from it!

Old Games I Still Love: Evil Genius

Evil Genius, where do I even start with this gem of a game? One of the few games to take the Dungeon Keeper formula and do something good (or evil) with it. After playing to death the Dungeon Keeper games this was the game I turned to and it was carried a large part by it's setting with me, I am definitely a fan of the whole comic take on a 70's James Bond/Cold War setting. I spent many an hour perfecting complex trap layouts, the perfect looking base layout and trying to find the best set-up of henchmen and minions to do my evil bidding.

Everyone starts somewhere.. Even Evil Geniuses.

The start sees you land on a desert island of indeterminate origin with your titular Evil Genius, a henchmen and a small band of worker minions. From there much as in Dungeon Keeper you lay out corridors, plan out rooms, place furniture and equipment, place traps, sensors and security camera's. All whilst doing your utmost to prevent the forces of justice from interfering with your nefarious plans. Aside from the building aspect there is also the World Domination screen, a world map which sees you sending off your minions and henchmen to perform various acts of infamy for loot and recognition (and usually money.)

You could have a vast array of helpful minions from the humble and disposable worker to marksmen, spin-doctors and martial artists. You have no direct control of your minions instead a 'tag' system for how they interact with targets and use of security camera's and loud-speakers gives you a pretty hands off way of manipulating your lackeys.

Of course you can't do this without consequence as the various intelligence agencies around the globe get ever more irked at your evil doing and start sending ever more dangerous agents to deal with you. It generally begins with investigators coming to your island in an attempt to find evidence of your evil deeds to report back to their superiors, if they escaped with information your 'heat level' would increase and more dangerous responses would be sent. Thieves and infiltrators would attempt to steel back your ill gotten gains, whilst saboteurs would try and cripple your base (usually blowing up power generators.) Then there were the soldiers, the shoot first, shoot again and usually keep shooting anything and everything until it was dead or exploded. Finally, the super agents who could usually mow down your minions and even permanently kill your more powerful henchmen.

What I did like about dealing with enemy agents was they were always given an assigned mission, such as sabotage something or steal back some priceless treasure. However they only had a set time to complete it so if they got distracted by social minions or delayed by traps they could run out of time and leave. If they left without finishing their mission or seeing anything nefarious you would actually lower your global heat rating.

You could even construct a hotel to distract roaming tourists and investigators but in general it was horribly expensive and never seemed to do that good a job. Though I often still built one anyway, just a shame it didn't make you any money (always felt like an oversight to me.)

Having trouble with someone? Stir them up in the Mixing Bowl!

There's a lot of fun to be had in Evil Genius, from watching some disturbingly hilarious interrogation devices squeezing information (sometimes literally) out of those pesky do-gooders to watching a new henchman's special abilities in action. One of my personal favourite things was the traps system especially once you research and unlock some of the more advanced sensors and traps to use. I sometimes spent hours making perhaps overly complex trap systems, though that did get you bonus money and notoriety for particularly successful ones. Also I just love watching a fully functioning base running with technician's maintaining equipment to guards hauling prisoners off to holding cells, I am just that kind of gamer.

Taken five minutes before saboteurs turned half of this into ash and body bags.

I'd say the strongest points of Evil Genius are as follows in my opinion:

• Art Style and Animations: The stylised visuals and excellent animations ensure this game is easy on the eyes even by today's standards. Everything from the small details of how a minion carries a prisoner the the various interrogation devices ensure there is always something to amuse the Evil Genius in all of us.
• Base Building: The sheer amount of rooms, objects and traps you could build kept me a very happy base builder indeed. One can only hope the sequel dials it up to an extra evil eleven! I am a massive fan of base builders being a self confessed turtle in strategy games.
• Setting: The comic take on 70's spy fiction makes it feel like an interesting mix between James Bond and Austin Powers. I don't think it would work anywhere near as well if it had gone for the realism route.
• Traps: The traps system is one of the better I have seen in a game like this allowing fairly complex multi-layer trap systems to be built and when they work. Oh boy is it satisfying to watch it working.

The World Domination screen in all it's clunky glory!

The game is far from perfect and now with a sequel in the works I am hoping the developers address some of this old classics quirks and faults:

• Clunky Interface: This can get irritating on occasion due to the 'tag' system as you can only directly control your henchmen and Evil Genius. Not to mention an overall lack of feedback across the board can make busy bases tricky to manage when under attack.
• World Domination Mode: A part of it is due to the lack of interface feedback when in the base part of the game. Though in general I think much more could have been done with it.
• Difficulty: I am a fan of challenging games don't get me wrong but you can get to a point in this where you hit a death spiral that can take a couple of hours before you realise it. 
• Hotel System: Honestly for the expense it never seemed to work enough to justify it meaning you had something which cost a whole pile of money that might only distract a handful of tourists or agents.

This game is genuinely one of my all time favourites which likely wouldn't surprise anyone given my love of Dungeon Keeper style games. Which meant the news of a sequel becoming official means I am more than a little hyped. On the off chance one of the dev's stumbles across this humble blog I leave some potential ideas and thoughts for the sequel beyond the 'More of everything cool!' ideas.

• Improved Interface/UI: Especially in regard to the world domination mode, as there was only a brief hard to see pop-up when enemy agents were active on that map. Far too often I'd be busy building in my base and not see the brief number pop up telling me minions were dying on the world map. The tag system could likely be improved, perhaps set global orders or even orders for specific minions and targets. One example could be to have social minions all attempt to weaken and distract investigators and guards to always capture or kill enemy soldiers etc.
• More Ways to Make Money: Never really made sense that you could only go out and steal on the world map. Maybe have it so you can set-up front companies taking a page out of the old Gangsters games. Perhaps even have it so if the hotel system returns it allows you to make money?
• Different Evil Base Locations: Perhaps on top of the desert island and the jungle volcano lair some I'd like to see are an arctic base, an underwater base, perhaps even a moon base? Just a few ideas.
• Multi-Level Bases: This one would be tricky to pull off unless they limited it to like 2 or 3 levels. It would however be a pretty neat feature and allow for some pretty massive bases.
• Custom Evil Genius: Being able to create your own evil genius, select abilities, appearance, maybe base or minion style would be so awesome especially if there are more RPG like mechanics put into the game this time around. 

That is it for this blog post though, took me long enough, not entirely sure if it made sense but if you'll excuse me, I better get back to conquering the world!

Five Things I'd Personally Like to See In: The Elder Scrolls VI

With the recent announcement from Bethesda that the next installment of the Elder Scrolls series is in production as well as me diving back into Skyrim recently I figured I may as well do a blog post like this. Now bear in mind this is just what I would personally like to see, nothing has been confirmed aside from it being in production, we don't even know where it's set. 

Now a little bit of a background, I have loved the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind so to say I am perhaps a little hyped would be understating it! I don't even want to count the hours I've sunk into Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim combined. 

This top 5 list won't be in any particular order so take it more along the lines of five things I'd like to see in the next Elder Scrolls, so without further ado, here we go with number five!

5. Spell Crafting

Now spell crafting was conspicuous by it's absence in Skyrim and if I am honest the vanilla spells were not all that exciting. Thankfully mods managed to fix a lot of that (such as Apocalypse magic and the like) but giving us an interesting spell crafting system would be oh so appreciated.

I am not entirely sure how they could do it in an interesting way but perhaps a base spell type (projectile, aura, stream etc.) Then secondary and/or even tertiary effects as your spell crafting ability increases. For example an aura spell that raises the dead and gives them all bound bows or a chain lightning spell which casts an area of effect frenzy on each target hit, that kind of idea could I think be very cool and interesting to include.

I just hope if they do decide to reintroduce spell crafting they take some inspiration from the extensive magic mods for Skyrim when it comes to spells and effects. Which leads us into number 4 quite nicely.

4. Improved Magic

For the most part magic was alright in Skyrim but things like destruction magic scaled especially poorly and the selection of spells wasn't exactly inspiring overall. I don't think I'm the only one who'd like to see a veritable library of fun new spells and spell effects in the next installment of the Elder Scrolls.

One spell school in particular I'd like to see some changes to due to it being a personal favourite: conjuration. I am mainly hoping I can quite literally command a veritable army of undead thralls or elemental Atronachs as having only two of each in Skyrim was a little disappointing to my favourite build (a sneaky, stealthy user of conjuration and illusion magic if you were curious!)

Though some overall increased variety of spells across the board would be greatly appreciated I feel.

This would be in addition to spell crafting hopefully but I'd genuinely settle for just a lot more fun spells. The scaling issue with some of the magic should also be addressed which leads me to the next thing I'd like to see, an expanded perks system!

3. Expanded and Improved Perks and Skills

Now there was nothing wrong in the slightest with Skyrim's perks system I just hope they expand upon it and give every skill some really fun perks to use. If only to add to the roleplaying aspect of things, enabling new synergies between various perk trees, if they even take that approach this time.

A lot of my desire for this comes from recently using the Ordinator perks pack for Skyrim which massively expands the perk tree for every skill and allows for some frankly insane synergies. I don't expect Bethesda to go quite that crazy but I'd definitely like to see the perks and skills system expanded somewhat.

Some kind of scaling related to skill increasing effectiveness and damage would be nice I think too. A character with a maximum of 100 in for example two handed weapons should be vastly more effective than a character with 5 in two handed weapons regardless of perks. Then again maybe the leveling and skill system will be entirely different? We can but speculate!

2. Settlement Building

I actually didn't mind the settlement building aspect of Fallout 4 though it was far from perfect. However I think a settlement building aspect in the next Elder Scrolls would be all kinds of awesome if it's implemented correctly. Plus you could already build your own houses in Skyrim with the Hearthfire DLC so it's the next logical step anyway.

However I would much prefer it if it had you focusing on just one big settlement rather than dozens of smaller ones. Say for some story, plot or guild related reason you become lord or lady and have to choose one of several locations with various pros and cons for the new settlement. 

They could even add more of a management aspect to it as well and I wouldn't complain in the slightest! Managing caravans and patrols, hiring enchanters and blacksmiths and fending off bandit raids which brings me quite neatly to number one.

1. Living/Dynamic World

Now Skyrim did a pretty good job of creating a believably living world but I'd like to see a genuinely living and breathing sandbox that carries on with or without player interaction. Maybe a bit much to hope for and mind boggling in it's complexity to implement but would I like to see it, yes, yes I would.

Bandit camps that grow in size if ignored, raiding nearby towns, carvans and merchants moving between towns that can affect and change the availability of goods and resources. Smaller settlements being wiped out only for errant necromancers to raise the fallen and go on a rampage. Watching rival armies from different factions clashing in epic battles whether you are part of them or not. Things like that, this one is likely more of a pipe dream I know but I live in hope that one day, those kinds of things are the norm in RPG's. 

I was originally going to do a top ten but I only got to seven so I'll do another top five when I actually think of a couple more things I'd like to see in The Elder Scrolls VI. Maybe a tad early for hype but can you really blame me for looking forward to it? I hope not!