About the game

Written by Drunken Gamer

If there is a genre of gaming that could already be considered complex, RTS tops the bill. Making sure you have an effective strike force while also keeping your base defended and ensuring you have the resources to keep the fight going are but some of it’s generic demands.
Clearly this wasn’t complex enough for the guys at Hazardous Software. They decided to go beyond real-time and into meta-time with Achron. What this means, in simple terms, is that they added time-travel to the battlefield, so now as well as wondering where the attack is coming from, you also have to consider the ‘when’.
What I’m going to try and do is explain exactly how they have managed to include such a mind-bending concept into both the single and multiplayer game.
Wish me luck.

Firstly I have to explain a little about the basics of Achron’s user interface. All your usual RTS staples are there – unit and production controls, overview map, etc. – but what is unique to the game is the timeline controls. It is here that you see how things are playing out in the game, how the actions in the past and future are impacting things, and when you can expect those actions to be propagated into the present.
How it does this is difficult to explain, yet once seen in action you will almost instantly understand it. There are three marker lines on the timeline at any point: yourself, the enemy & the present. They exist to show you where the other is in the overall timeline.
So, if you suddenly see your enemy’s marker jump into the past, you know to be watching that area of the timeline for its second use – activity notification. Whenever something is done, such as damage taken or dished out by your units and structures, it’s plotted on the timeline in a simple to understand bar-graph style.

Lost yet? OK, let give you a step-by-step of what it would look like.


Read More in Issue 24

About the game

Written by Anonymous

Cronous, the full 3D MMORPG from Lizard Interactive, is making a big splash in the free to play pond at the moment – so we thought we’d check it out and bring you the all info we could on it.

CRONOUS has evolved over the years, successfully gathering and meeting the needs of almost 3′000′000 global fans. Players from all continents come together to play, trade, war, socialize, raise pets and take part in a variety of other online activities.
As with other MMORPGs, players level up by gaining experience points which can be gained battling monsters, doing quests, fighting in wars or participating in events.

You start out by doing quests, which Cronous has over 100 of, and battling monsters outside of the castle. Results of quests can differ greatly according to the actions of the player, adding tons of replay value to the experience! Once you have gained enough experience, learned sufficient skills and equipped yourself with weapons and armor, you eventually travel to the more distant regions for more adventure…

Read More in Issue 16

About the game

Written by Gow

The Battlefield series has always been a staple in most PC FPS-gamers’ diet, from the original – Battlefield: 1942, to the more recent incarnations – Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142 and the constant stream of updates that appeared for each. It’s a massive franchise that demands respect, despite it’s abandoning of the PC world with the release of Bad Company in 2008.
A sigh of relief could be heard by the PC community when EA/DICE announced that Bad Company 2 will be released for PC as well as the usual consoles, but does it stand up to our elitist views of the genre? Kind of.

Bad Company 2 uses DICE’s Frostbite engine, which elaborates on Bad Company’s destructible environments with the ability to level entire buildings. This is the first time PC gamers will be able to destroy the environment in the Battlefield series (unless Battlefield: 1943 comes out soon), and it’s a welcome addition to the franchise. The feeling of being able to level a building is nothing short of fantastic, knowing that you can simply destroy the building to get at the enemy is by far a more appealing option than hopping out of your tank to run in and shoot them – a safer one too!
In practice, the destruction of buildings isn’t quite as effective as you’d like. While you can destroy buildings, it leaves no rubble. This was a concious choice by EA/DICE, intended to keep the game free-flowing and fun. This does mean that you can’t tumble a building onto a tank, or crush the inhabitants, but it does mean that if a target is within a building, it can’t be buried, so in the long run, it’s for the best. DICE have worked hard on making the game more enjoyable to play, creating a more playable experience overall, however it seems to have backfired a little. The hardcore PC crowd currently playing hands-on are bewildered by some of the ideas implemented in this latest incarnation, which appear to result in a strange, new direction for the tactical shooter.

As with all Battlefield games, the key to success is that of good teamwork and clever use of your available arsenal. To promote the use of squads, DICE have implemented the squad points system from previous Battlefield instalments; stay close to your squad and every kill and action will result in a squad bonus. This can be a little difficult when you have a four man squad and a 2-man helicopter, but someone has to fly those damned things!
You can spawn on any member of your squad, which is a total bitch when it comes to defending. Leave one member of a squad alive and all of a sudden you could be screwed seven ways from Sunday when the rest of the squad spawn in. The old method of having a squad leader seemed a much more elegant solution than the resulting ‘frag-fest’ from spawning in on squad members.


Read More in Issue 23

About the game

Written by TurkeySaladBoy

You will laugh, sigh and coo in Moxy Games wonderfully cute and addictive micro-management Facebook game, Puppy World. Be warned though – it’s just like caring for the real thing.

The gameplay of Puppy World is built on the pop-culture Tamagotchi fad of the 90’s, in that
you have to keep your puppy fed, cleaned, spoiled with praise and entertained. Chose from a selection of default puppies, each with subtle differences in appearance, such as eye colour, ear size and eccentric animations that can be provoked by interaction. Pick the sex (doggy is not an option) of your puppy, its personality type, give it a name and you are set to go!

There is a handy tutorial that guides you gently into the playing experience, with the option to turn it off so that it doesn’t interrupt every play session thereafter. The ultimate aim is to maintain your puppy’s mood with the resources you have available, although there is a shop you can visit to replenish your resources. This maintenance requires regular playtime on Facebook. Herein is the addictive Pringles-like mechanic of Facebook games. However Puppy World achieves the fine balance between Tamagotchi and other Facebook games. Sure, it has the potential to own you. As Corey Ford once famously said, “Properly trained, a man can be a dog’s best friend”, to the point where interaction levels mirror a real-life owner-puppy relationship, which can be harmful if you have deadlines to meet – or a real puppy to maintain – but then again, your puppy is now family.

Navigation around the simple yet colourful interface of Puppy World has been well thought-out, with the core statistics you need to manage displayed across the top. These are; happiness, which is also reinforced with the current mood in the bottom right of the screen; tummy; energy; level of in-game currency – bones and coins – and your current rank or level, represented through love points. The essential interactive game actions – the ones that will help you maintain the mood of your puppy – like Pet me, Feed me and Clean me are clearly laid out on the left of the display. Note that you can only perform one action at once. This is represented by the colour change of each of the options, from blue to grey.


Read More in Issue 23

[SinglePic not found]

Written by DrunkenGamer

Thanks to our friends in the industry, Paddy the DrunkenGamer gained first access to Cryptic Studios’ Champions Online beta. After running around the office doing his “Zoiberg of excitement” again, he started drawing up designs of ‘Guinness Man’, only to be scuppered by his drunken lack of drawing skills. Never mind, eh?

There are a lot of MMO’s on the way but Champions is one that I have been following very closely.

There are a lot of things that interest me about it, particularly as it’s from the guys behind City of Heroes, so I thought I would try to focus sections of this preview on the various key features.
Read More in Issue 15