Games I Love: War for the Overworld

To anyone whom has read my blog up to this point likely will not be the least bit surprised to see War for the Overworld pop up on it. My love of games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius make it an almost foregone conclusion I had my eye on the game since I heard about it but didn't get it until last year. In general I usually wait before purchasing a game for several reasons, usually price related but also I like to get 'complete' editions with all DLC's. That said it was worth the wait by far and certainly stands up as a very good spiritual successor to the venerable Dungeon Keeper series.

The beginnings of any Underlords domain.

Much like the Dungeon Keeper games you start off with your dungeon heart, a handful of loyal worker imps and enough gold to get you started. From there you dig out tiles to make space for rooms, those rooms not only serve functions like feeding your minions or letting them rest but also each room generally attracts certain kinds of minions. So far so Dungeon Keeper however this to me feels like it is dialed up to eleven as there are a lot of new features and additions which make it just as good as it's older inspiration if not better in some cases.

The veins of evil, the talents of dungeon management!

From there you expand your reach to find gold and artifacts, research new spells, items and traps thanks to the new talent tree style veins of evil all to bring your nefarious objectives to fruition. The veins of evil deserves a special mention I think, as you spend your sins to unlock everything from new rooms to traps, summons and more.

Usually the objective is defeating an enemy in some way for the most part but the missions have a lot of variety and some of them can be particularly challenging to pull off on your first attempt. Some missions have you commanding a limited number of minions with no dungeon or reinforcements to support you. Others see you facing off against multiple opponents keeping you constantly on your toes as you attempt to defeat multiple attacks from different directions.

You also cast spells and use constructs and rally flags to give you more control over your minions and any battles that will eventually erupt. The battles can also get quite crazy in their scale at times which is both a good and a bad point but I'll get to that later.

Battles are fun to watch but can be a little chaotic when trying to target specific units with spells at times.

The sheer variety of creatures, spells and traps on offer took me a little by surprise to begin with. As they even opted to include the more beast like minions of the original Dungeon Keeper

Also props to the developers for calling on the vocal talents of Richard Ridings to voice Mendechaus (who acts as mentor and tormentor in equal part!) Which only makes any former Dungeon Keepers feel right at home in this game or at least it did for me.

A dungeon in all it's gold filled monster guarded glory!

Some tips for anyone starting out as a fledgling underlord would be these:

• Do not rush to expand as you may make it harder to defend yourself or starve yourself of gold before you find more.
• Use the prophecy spell early and often to help you plan out your dungeon as well as find any useful shrines, secrets, neutral rooms and creatures etc.
• Don't splash out on big rooms too early (by big I mean 5x5 or bigger.)
• Some rooms don't need to be perfectly square or rectangular to function such as the lair and beast den.
• Space is a key resource, only at certain sizes do you get more usable objects in a room such as training dummies, some rooms benefit from having fortified walls as well so keep that in mind when planning.
• Try to keep your workers alive, high level workers are massively useful.
• Need to get rid of some annoying enemy trap that your minions can't seem to reach no matter where you place the rally flag. Use possession on a ranged or flying minion and take matters into your own hands (or claws/tentacles.)

The game isn't without it's flaws but in the grand scheme of things they are relatively minor:

• Large battles can be frustratingly chaotic, if you are trying to cast spells into the fray or possess that one minion it can be hard to even find them in a pile of explosions and flailing limbs.
• Some maps can feel very cramped, more of a gripe than an actual flaw but I feel some bigger maps and time to build up in certain missions would have made them less frustrating without affecting the challenge.
• Campaign pacing feels a little off at the start at least compared to Dungeon Keeper 2, just my opinion as I do love the campaign all the same the start just feels a bit 'fast' to me.

Overall this is a worthy modern version of Dungeon Keeper and has more than enough shiny new things to be a damned good game in it's own right. It has quite a selection of additional game modes if you invest in any of the DLC, everything from the return of 'My Pet Dungeon' to skirmishes and campaigns meaning you won't run out of things to do all that quickly. So this game gets a solid recommendation from me especially if you like myself loved Dungeon Keeper.

Now if you don't mind, I have an empire to conquer!

Games I Love: Enter the Gungeon

Now when it comes to Rogue-lites I've always had a bit of a thing for them when they are done right, things like Everspace, FTL, Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain to name a few of my favourite ones to date. Enter the Gungeon caught my eye in large part due to it's cartoony and colourful aesthetic as well as it taking the theme of firearms and running with it in every aspect of the game from puns to enemies. Literally everything in this game is a play on that from the enemies bullets with guns and so many I wouldn't want to spoil.

The breach, where you choose your character before a run and do a lot of other things!

As you can see in the screenshot above this is usually the first thing you will see, the so called 'breach' where you select your character and do a lot of other things I won't spoil too much save for one. All four characters have their own passive ability, starting items and default infinite ammo weapon for example the marine is more accurate with all weapons and starts with a point of armour and a single use ammo call-in. The hunter starts with a very useful crossbow and a pet corgi who has a chance of digging up extra items. The convict starts with a sawn-off shotgun, a molotov cocktail and a passive of doing more damage if hit. Finally the pilot, he gets a lockpick item which can be used in place of finding keys to open chests as well as cheaper items from the in-gungeon stores.

Once you have selected your character you get dropped quite literally into the gungeon proper with the task of basically reaching the end. As with many rogue-lites however that is far easier said than done and each death is permanent. I find the combat in this game to be one of it's greatest strengths it is by and large skill based, thanks to the dodge roll mechanics (Dodge Roll is also the name of the dev's.)

The dodge roll itself provides some immunity frames for it's first half which you would know if you played the tutorial (and you should.) It is frankly essential as especially in rooms with lots of enemies it can quite literally turn into bullet hell.

Another thing which helps the game is the variety on offer in a lot of it's aspects, weapon and item variety as well as enemy variety. Enemies all have their own behaviour and AI as well as their own attacks and bullet patterns you need to learn so you don't find yourself thrown back to the breach.

Even after the time I have sunk into it I have yet to see all the weapons (I know the death screen at the end shows 15 runs total but I reset my save a while ago.) There is pretty much everything you can think of and some you likely didn't. AK-47's, UZI's, Tommy Guns, Shotguns of every flavour, bows, crossbows and many more of the 200+ that I just won't spoil. That isn't even getting into the host of passive and active items like health upgrades and molotov cocktails.

Resource management is also a key aspect, from your limited health to your better weapons which have limited ammo and can only be replenished by various ammo boxes (though if you are lucky you can buy some at shops too.)

It's harder than I thought to get good action screenshots in this!

When you get on a good run the game can be insanely fun, when you find the perfect selection of passive items and weapons and plow through the hordes of gundead with ease. The environments and the way they react to battles also keeps the gunplay pretty interesting, fighting in what looks like a library? Then expect there to be books and pages flying about as you and your enemies exchange fire. Whilst luck will always be a big part of rogue-lite games Enter the Gungeon feels genuinely more about skill.

Most all the weapons are at the very least interesting to use and vary in effectiveness from godlike to junk (I am looking at you unfinished gun!)

Boss battles are always interesting and often pretty tense experiences and I haven't seen much less beaten them all yet but as with the enemies there is quite a variety of bosses and even some secret ones as I understand it.

It's not a perfect game by any stretch and the following would best sum up the flaws I think it has:

• Somewhat punishing difficulty level: Whilst this has been improved with the latest content update (Advanced Gungeons & Draguns) it can still stomp all over you but a lot of the difficulty is now centered on the next flaw. 
• The battle against the random: If you don't get a decent weapon on the first floor even beating that first boss can be a grueling affair. Also if you get no ammo drops your better weapons will eventually run dry. Though the latest update did increase the in-run currency drops (brass) so you can sometimes alleviate the RNG with the shop on each floor.
• Wiki syndrome: This isn't the only rogue-lite to fall into this trap and Enter the Gungeon's Ammonomicon (the in game encyclopedia) does explain what most things do. Some mechanics like the way the curse stat works are never explained in game which, genuinely makes little sense to me. Meaning if you want to understand the ins and outs of the game you'll have to search for it outside of the game. 

In conclusion out of the many rogue-lite action games to emerge over the years and the fact this has had two pretty hefty free content updates make this among my favourite games of the last few years. Despite how hard the game can be and the frustration when you get a bad run it is one of the better rogue-lites out there and I see myself getting many more hours out of this.

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!

Old Games I Still Love: SimCity 4 Deluxe

Now city builders for me I have to really be in the mood for but SimCity 4 was always a favourite after getting bitten by the SimCity bug with my first ever PC. It had a pile of games come with the mountain of useless software they always used to bundle in with store bought, prebuilt rigs. Although the only two I really remember were SimCity 2000 and Alpha Centauri and I played them pretty extensively but the PC had been bought 'for homework' this was when I was mainly a gamer on the venerable PSX (Playstation one) but anyway! What I was trying to say before I swerved down memory lane was that this wasn't my first SimCity game, just my favourite.

In SimCity 4 like most other games in the franchise you are plonked unceremoniously into an empty looking patch of verdant green countryside and tasked with turning it into a concrete urban paradise. Usually easier said than done as keeping the sims happy enough to want to move in was tricky. With SimCity 4 however you could actually develop interconnected cities via the region view which in my opinion added an extra layer of depth and consideration to the gameplay formula and could remove some of the space issues from single self contained cities. The region you see below was the default region, containing all the tutorials but there were other regions you could load up, download or even create your own if you wanted, though I think I enjoyed the default region because of variety of landscapes it offered.

The region view, the first thing most people will see!

Once you actually get into the game properly you'll find your omnipresent gaze looking down at a patch of usually green countryside. Normally you'd tend to jump right in but in my case I'd always play around with the terrain tools (which was expensive once you had actually started your city.) Depending what I wanted to do I'd either flatten it all out so I had more room or create some interesting hills and valleys if I wanted to play around with bridges, tunnels, ferries etc and just wanted it to look a bit more interesting than a big homogeneous square of concrete blocks. Throwing down a few thousand trees didn't hurt dealing with pollution either even if most of them got flattened from the initial rush of laying down roads. You could also throw in a variety of wildlife if you wanted though once the city was started I never used to see them, a shame, having your police needing to deal with bears rummaging through the bins could have been amusing.

In the beginning! (Do the tutorials!)

Once I had done with sculpting the terrain it was straight into mayor mode for me, which is the main meat of the game, though what I enjoyed most about SimCity 4 was the fact you didn't have to make a straight up city. Due in large part to the region system, you could make farming communities linked up by road and rail to a neighbouring commercial city which was then further linked to a residential one. Although the way I generally played was I'd make one fairly typical city in a central area and build it up as far as I could to give the region a decent size population and then build connecting cities for specific roles, like farming, heavy industry, commercial. I'll admit that could get a little disjointed due to loading times but it was still an interesting layer to the standard SimCity formula that added some longevity to it.

Most of the building work is done automatically by any Sims that decide they want to move to your city. You would simply set down the zones according to the three main types (residential, commercial and industrial) and selected from various densities of such. As Sims moved in they build houses, shops and factories according to all kinds of factors, like water, power and more. Their education level also played a part, highly educated sims wanted high tech jobs, whereas Sims with low education were quite happy in farms and heavily polluting factories. The only real way you could directly influence things was taxing the various levels of businesses, increasing it for things you didn't want and decreasing it for things you did. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get the hang of it so that my Sims were living in a gleaming modern metropolis rather than a dystopian smog-choked slum.

So aside from laying down roads and designating 'zoning' areas you also had to provide various utilities and amenities for Sims. Everything from clinics and police stations to universities, parks and power stations. Keeping your Sims happy whilst trying to make enough money to keep growing was the key challenge in SimCity 4 and I'll admit I catastrophically failed many many times before I even started to see my Sims building anything close to a skyscraper. Water was always the one I had trouble with though, always struggling to get the balance of pumps and treatment plants right so that everyone had clean water without me killing the budget. Though as with most things you could make use of the region layer and dedicate one or two 'cities' to exporting water to other places, much as you could do with electricity as well as many other things.

The budget was always the trickiest thing to get a handle on initially though at various points and milestones you could get special buildings to help out in various ways. From simple things like a farmers market to special deals to help you balance the books at a downside. The most memorable of those for me is of course was the missile range, provided a fairly hefty amount of income at the cost of, well what goes up must come down so your Sims didn't often approve of being the target of a missile strike. Who knew.

That urban sprawl!

Once I did get the hang of balancing the books though it was oh so satisfying to see a sleepy little town turn into a bustling metropolis. If you focused on just building one self contained city you'd often start running into space issues especially when it came to the larger buildings like power-plants and hospitals. However, once again this was where I found the region system to give so much more freedom in how you approached city building and something I spent a good chunk of a college summer holiday making use of. I got seriously into it as well, with scrawled notes on bits of paper as I set myself the goal of entirely filling a region, figuring out the best uses and placements for everything from freight and passenger rails to the vast raised highways and airports. 

There were also more involved aspects along the way such as deploying firetrucks or police to help deal with various disasters that occasionally popped up. Also you could even drive various vehicles around your city in a little mini-game added with the Rush Hour expansion to break up the placid pace of mayoral life or even just get a little extra cash or mayor rating for the trouble. 

Traffic problems getting you down, the autosaurus will stomp them flat! (Along with everything else..)

Of course when the building was done and you grew tired or urban paradise or perhaps you just find your Sims still being obnoxiously demanding you could always do some 'creative remodelling' by unleashing various disasters. From the more typical offerings of earthquakes and tornadoes or the more unusual (and fun) ones such as unleashing a giant alien robot or deploying the autosaurus (seen above!) 

There genuinely haven't been many other city builders or economic management Sims that grabbed my attention quite so hard before or after (those are for other blog posts though.) Sometimes even these days if that city builder itch strikes SimCity 4 is usually the first stop to scratch it as I find it still one of the better ones out there and these days you could likely run it on anything slightly more advanced than a toaster so it doesn't tax even my ageing rig. 

So all in all even now when I want to satisfy that city building urge, SimCity 4 Deluxe is my go-to choice.

Old Games I Still Love: Startopia

This game for me even now still scratches that management game itch without being so completely super serious like a lot of management games tend toward being. Long ago during an extended lunch break at college I wandered into the local GAME store as I so often did seeing what new games were on the shelves, grumbling at not having enough pennies and wandering to the bargain section instead. It was at that point I stumbled across Startopia, now I love sci-fi as a setting so I picked it up and had a look at the back of the box, the idea of managing a space station was immediately appealing. The rest as they say is history, I counted up my meager pennies and picked it up the next day, even if it did massively slow down working on a college project (oops, always do your homework first kids!) 

The game got it's tentacles into me pretty fast, catchy music, colourful art style and enough buildings and research to keep me playing 'just five more minutes' until it was two in the morning. I didn't find out til a couple of years later reading an actual review in a gaming magazine that the studio responsible for it was comprised of three ex-Bullfrog developers. Though the influences from games such as Theme Park were obvious to see after finding that fact out. 

Everyone starts somewhere!

The game featured a campaign of sorts as well as a sandbox mode and multiplayer though I never really made much use of multiplayer I'm afraid to say. However, most games of Startopia start in largely the same way, you'd have some pre-packaged crates containing pre-built rooms and some basic Scuzzers (construction and maintenance robots) and a pool of energy which both acted as currency and powered your buildings. You also generally had access to all three decks of one section of the space-station, those being the sub-level where most industrial focused buildings are kept, the pleasure deck for entertainment and shops etc. The last deck was perhaps the most interesting one, the biodeck, where you could terraform and sculpt it's environment in order to grow plants for your residents and guests to relax in, or harvest them for crates of useful and valuable goods. 

From this point you generally had to build up facilities, expand into other sections and research or trade for new things to bring in more energy to build more things and so on. You also had to hire the various alien visitors who boarded the station to crew your facilities, with each species having it's own structure or job, for example the Salt Hog's worked your factories and recycler facilities. The greys would crew your medical facilities whilst the muscled red giants that are the Kasvagorian's would keep watch from your security facilities. You also had to keep them happy lest they decided you weren't a very good employer and left, though that aspect was fairly basic as if they were unhappy you simply gave them a payrise. 

The research system also I think was pretty neat at the time, whilst you could of course just buy and research so called technology crates, you could also place any item you could pick up with your teleporter equipped cursor onto the laboratory research pad and you'd usually get something new out of it. If you dropped a piece of litter onto it for example you'd unlock the litter bin. Not all research let to something new but it always at least improved something be it making those medical supplies last longer or your Scuzzer's able to run for longer before needing to head to a recharging station.

Now I mentioned earlier that it was obvious to see the influences of Bullfrog games in Startopia once I knew the dev's had come from there. The most obvious one to me at least is the occasional medical emergencies you could opt to try and deal with much in the same vain as Theme Hospital. A good way to get energy if your facilities and staff could handle it or you would be fined for each one that didn't make it or worse, you'd end up with a horde of Skrasher's ripping your station and guests apart. 

The moment you realise you need more security guards. Skrashers are nasty.

Other smaller things could be seen as influences as well from other Bullfrog games such as being able to purchase additional furniture and equipment for your various rooms to improve them (again like theme hospital.) To making sure you had enough Scuzzer droids to repair, maintain and clean your station much like Theme Park. 

There is unlike the majority of management games a combat system in place though this was likely the biggest of the games flaws. Having minimal direct control over your employee's meant combat could boil down to you hammering the attack button to stack as many of your armed personnel on the target to take it down and most of the time only a few would show up. That said it wasn't completely terrible and it could be quite fun to watch when it worked. Aside from attacking other station administrators there was also the task of dealing with spies, finding bombs from rivals to the aforementioned Skrashers that were the.. Unpleasant result of a certain infection not being treated in time not helped by the fact that every single alien petted their carrier the Memau and as your station got larger it got increasingly more difficult to keep track of everything and try to find those tiny little problems. 

Cute but surprisingly deadly. -The Memau

However even these days, if the management game itch crops up for me, Startopia is often something that will be installed for a quick play as it's easy to get into but has enough depth to keep it interesting. The music I found to be at least fairly memorable and added to the atmosphere of the game no-end.  The graphics are cartoony and colourful enough to hold up today though far from perfect and sometimes it can just feel so satisfying watching your station ticking over from on high, just a shame Mucky Foot Productions didn't get to make much of anything else. It's not my favourite management game of all time but it certainly ranks highly as an old favourite for me!

When things get going it can be quite a sight to behold.