War of the Roses

So to review War of the Roses, I'll be breaking one of my base rules - I don't do multiplayer. However, with the amount of time I've put into this game, well, let's just say that I need to do something to justify it. While, as always, I will tell you about the game based on my experience with it, given the ever changing nature of multiplayer games with content updates and the constantly in flux player base, your results may vary. So, ESRB like warning covered.

War of the Roses is medieval combat game set in the 1400s in a war torn England, as the House of York and the House of Lancaster battle it out. The devs claim historically inspired warzones, weapons, and the like, and while everything is certainly old, my knowledge of English history, battles, and military equipment from this time period can be summed up in one word - nothing. In fact, the only time I've even heard anything about period accuracy mentioned outside the game, it's been in flame wars over which game is better - this or Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.

What I do know is that they had swords, axes, and blunt weapons during the 1400s, so at least that part is accurate.

The game contains the typical gametypes for online shooter games, so if you're familiar with Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty, Counter Strike, or Battlefield, you will know exactly what to do here. Assault is a multiobjective attack/defend gametype. Attackers will be doing the usual stuff, like breaking down doors, pushing rams, and capturing points, while defenders will, you know, be doing their best to make sure that doesn't happen. Team Death Match is your standard slaughter fest, with a map running a predetermined time before the winners are announced. Conquest is a push/pull type attack and defend, where both teams attempt to capture the 3 or 5 points - in order - to secure victory. Pitched Battle rounds out the grouping, and is a short round of death match where you only get one life per round.

Generally I'd play Assault or Conquest, with much more of my time being spent in Conquest since Assault was only introduced in the Kingmaker update in March 2013, or roughly as the group of friends I was playing this game with began to migrate to other titles. The interesting thing with Conquest is that you don't win simply by controlling all the points, but rather by controlling the most points the longest, as you'll see there is a sliding scale at the bottom of the screen that pushes from one side to the other as a team continues to hold points. However, to make things really interesting, if you capture all the points, that bar pretty rapidly shifts, enough so that, while you may not get a clean win, your team will still maintain a majority at the end of the round. I've been in quite a few battles where, while our team had been steadily loosing for the first 25 minutes or so, holding only 1 point out of 3, we made a sudden comeback, captured all three points, and watched as the final score ended up in our favor by 51 - 49.

One of the downsides to objective based multiplayer, no matter what game you're playing. No one ever sticks to the damn objectives. It's kind of important when you're down as much as in this screen shot.

The combat in this game is interesting, though your experience will depend on what route you decide to take. Melee combat can be a bit tricky to really get a handle on, because it isn't the simplest thing to accomplish, mostly because there are plenty of things going on besides just swinging your axe that determine what kind of damage you'll end up doing. First up is simply attacking. All you have to do is press and hold mouse 1, determine your attack direction by moving the mouse accordingly, then release it to attack. In this way you charge up an attack by holding down the mouse longer, as well as select between a left, right, overhead, or uppercut swing. Charging up an attack will deal more damage, but can take enough time that you'll be open to an attack by a faster enemy. Now say it's time to block an attack. If you've got a shield, you just use that, otherwise you'll have to match the direction in which you block with that of the incoming attack. So if your enemy is doing a side swing from your left, you must block left, while an uppercut or stab requires you to block down. Your HUD helps with this by giving you a clue as to which direction your enemy is preparing to attack from, though I will admit that I initially mistook this for the standard "receiving damage from this direction indicators" in most first person shooters.

Those are just the basics of melee combat. To really get good at it, you'll need to figure out how to follow your parry with a riposte, feinting when attacking to lure your opponent to over committing to a block. There are hitboxes on weapons to consider, such as a longer axe that only does damage out at the blade, rather than along the shaft. Momentum is also a factor in determining how much damage you'll do, such that if you flip your mouse to pick up extra speed you can end up taking a so-so attack and turning it into an instakill. There are also penalties for missed attacks, and much, much more. It is recommended that you take some time to practice this, either by heading to a duel server, or trying the new practice mode that launched in June 2013.

This new practice mode is nice for figuring out hitboxes, and generally getting an idea of where your attacks will connect, but to really get a feel for the parry/riposte/feint system, you'll need to visit a duel server to get a friend to help you out. In this case, the hitbox is towards the end of the axe, so my actual attack landed on the shield, not the helm.

Ranged combat is a bit different, and up until June 2013 only came in two flavors - bow or crossbow. Each has it's benefits. Bows are fast, and you can pepper a target with arrows very quickly, such that if you're a good shot, or using the right arrows, you might even be able to down the murderous brute with a long sword before he closes the thirty yards to your perch. The downside is that bows generally don't do as much damage as crossbows, and that you can only keep them drawn for a limited time before you need to relax again. It's sort of a bow minigame, where if you release the string at the right time, you'll deal some good damage. Crossbows on the other hand are slow, and their minigame comes in when you attempt to reload them, since they have both an active and passive reload stat, and you can make them reload faster, but generally never fast enough to get more than one shot at someone charging at you. The advantage is that crossbows are powerful, and deal substantial damage. Even better is that they stay drawn, so can take your time and pick off someone, often at a great distance, making crossbows the sniper like weapon of this game. The final ranged weapon, though they are short range, are handgonnes, which were just added in June 2013. I'd like to tell you about them, but unfortunately they are extremely expensive to purchase (more on that system later), so I've never actually gotten to use one.

The final setup you can mess around with is Cavalry. It's pretty much what you would expect, as you're on top of a horse, armed with a lance and your secondary weapon, and you're allowed to use either while riding. Cavalry has an interesting role, though it depends on how well coordinated your team is, and how good you are at lining up your lance on someone's head. Things I've seen accomplished in this capacity: flanking the enemy and taking our archers or crossbowmen covering the point; taking the really long way around while both teams are fighting over point C, and instead heading to your next point, since you own C but haven't made progress towards B yet, thus allowing your squadmates to spawn on you and quickly force B to neutral, and then capturing it for your own team; epic horse battles; harassing people, including your own team, by running over them, at least, that is, until someone gets a lucky shot off at your horse, sending you flying.

I got to be quite good with the crossbow, and at times like these I was well rewarded, since I managed to deal a ton of damage, landed a headshot, and did enough to instantly kill the person in a single long distance shot. Oh, in case you're wondering where my target was, if you see that blue name by the rocks, roughly three quarters of the way towards the lake, well, the guy I shot thought he was going to get some easy execute points by finishing off my teammate over there.

No matter what class you decide to play as, one of the things you'll need to consider is where on your enemy you're attacking, which is part of what makes this game so interesting. This especially applies to melee, or rather, this is where you may notice it the most, but it's relevant everywhere. You see, there are various armor levels, such as plate, mail, leather, cloth, and bare skin, all of which impact the kind of damage you can deal on a successful hit. You select what armor you'll wear, broken down by body and helmet, but don't think that just because someone has plate for both pieces means that they don't have weak spots. This is where it becomes important to aim your attacks, because an inch can make a huge difference between a glancing blow on a plate helm, and sinking your blade into your opponent's visor slit. If you find that you still aren't doing enough damage, or you just can't hit those vulnerable spots, even if your enemy keeps his visor up, you may want to switch up your weapons, ammo, or attack style, since things like blunt weapons or stabs with swords deal more damage to plate, while piercing or cutting works better against softer armor. It's really not something you might realize right away, but there is a pretty complex system the forms the basis for this game.

I've already talked about how War of the Roses contains three classes. What I haven't talked about is the number of ways you can customize those classes. Basically, there are a ton of options. You've got plenty of choices from the weapon you use, the material it's made out of, the edge, fighting style, and more. Some weapon options change things like the active versus passive reload on crossbows, or change your bolts or arrows to add a temporary bleed when you hit someone. The customization can be a bit overwhelming, but it does allow you to tailor your character to the way you'd like to play. If you want a fast character, stick with the lighter armors, maybe a one handed weapon, and possibly a shield. Or maybe you are okay with dealing a little less damage, but decreasing the time it takes to prepare a swing, so you change your fighting style. Ultimately you'll find that the game is about trying to strike the perfect balance between speed and power, which comes down to an item's encumbrance stat. Basically, the more of it there is, the more it will slow you down. For example, I once played a crossbow sniper in full plate with a heavy shield, witch allowed me to aptly handle anyone who thought they could circle around and harass the ranged guys, only to find that when I switched to leather armor and a lighter shield I was able to reload twice as fast.

Heavy damage absorption may not do you any good against a light and fast opponent - you may never be able to get a swing charged without getting interrupted by his faster attacks. This guy in cloth took out 3 people in plate and mail.

In addition to being able to customize way too much about your weapons and armor, particularly when you get into the purely cosmetic stuff on helms or breastplates, there are perks to think about. Again, this will be something that is familiar to Call of Duty players. Perks come in several categories, and you're able to unlock two for each, so it'll be up to you to decide if you want to have better shield breaking ability or the option to push your opponent back as a Man At Arms, if you'd rather your arrows and bolts didn't drop so much as they travel or if you'd like to be able to zoom in on your targets, or if you'd opt for the ability to see the health status of your enemies over having bandages that heal you to full, as well as revives that do the same for downed teammates (those last two fall under the Surgeon section, and that's what I do, because you can also select faster bandages elsewhere, allowing your survive longer since they are unlimited, and also knowing who to pick off at low health, since you automatically bleed out when at low health).

You may be wondering just how it is you go about unlocking all of these different weapons, options, perks, and so forth. Well, that's the rub. You see, you have to buy these things with in game coins. You'll gain coins anytime you also game experience, though sometimes you might need to be a certain level to unlock certain perks, such as officer buffs, no matter how many coins you have. The good stuff is quite expensive, as you might expect, such as the best plate armor, which was 100k when I bought it (guns are currently the same). At a handful of coins for a knockdown, 200 for actually finishing off an enemy (an execute, which locks you into an animation for 5 seconds, making you very vulnerable), 300 for reviving a teammate that's been knocked down, and bonuses for other actions, including being on the winning team, healing another player, longshots, headshots, kill streaks, and instakills, it can take quite a bit of time to get the coins you'll need, especially since you'll also need to buy the new blade, fighting style, weapon material or crank, bolt type, and so forth for each weapon you unlock. This is where the game tries to tempt you into purchasing coins with real world dollars (or your currency equivalent), in a near pay-to-win moment.

Still, you have to be able to use the expensive weapon well if you want to beat me on the field of battle!

War of the Roses is certainly an interesting game, but it does depend entirely on who you are playing with. The game certainly encourages squad gameplay, since squad members can spawn on the squad leader, and the squad leader can issue two different buffs, such as one that increase the current health, or another that acts as a small heal over time, that scale based on the number of squadmates in close proximity, and there is an objective tagging system, and bonus experience and coins for both the person issuing the order and the one following it out. Taking advantage of things like that, when combined with someone riding a horse to sneak behind enemy lines, and a group of friends all using a third party voice communication software, well, let's just say it's fun to catch an entire team off guard, and then slaughter them with some extremely well place axe slices as they attempt to reclaim the point. That's how I played it - for 58 hours. The lowest I've seen it on sale for was at the $5 mark or so, unless you picked up a four pack for $15. There are certainly fun times to be had, though sometimes the best strategy seems to be swing wildly while in a group of enemies and watch them injure each other more than they hurt you, rather than the precision based mechanics the game claims to require. If you're interested, I highly suggest the demo, which allows full access to the game types, but does limit you to the default 4 classes, so no horses, crossbows, or handgonnes for you. Still, that will give you an opportunity to see how War of the Roses is a good game - 7 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 7/10

Suggested Price: $5

*****

For more War of the Roses, check out this collection of various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full sized image.

Supreme Commander

The last time I played an RTS, it was R.U.S.E., a game which I praised for its approachability, citing it's basic economic system,  instant build time, and simple upgrade system, even going so far as to suggest it as a great game to introduce someone to the RTS genre. So of course I followed that up with Supreme Commander, a massive game that is the complete opposite of simple and easily approachable, and that should only be someone's first RTS if you want to make them swear off the category all together.

As the successor, but not sequel, to Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander includes those same elements that make it stand out in the RTS genre with it's unique twists on classic ideas. While the basics of resources, unit construction, and tech trees are there, they aren't quite like anything I had ever experience before.

The scale of this game is huge. Take the above screen shot as an example. This is just a small corner of a map, and I've got a flight of 124 bomber's ready to start making runs into the enemy base.

Resource gathering isn't too strange, consisting of two - mass and energy.  To acquire mass, you must construct a mass extractor at one of a handful of designated mass points. Energy is acquired by building power plants, either a special one called a hydrocarbon plant on a specific point, or higher level ones later in the game that can be constructed anywhere you'd like. Resources are also infinite, so it's not like you can only harvest so much gold from a mine or there is a limited amount of vespene gas before that resource node collapses.

What really makes the resource system different is the way it's expended. I can't think of a single RTS I've ever played, though that number is small enough, where the resources weren't immediately deducted from your supplies when a unit started building, basically having you pay for the unit up front. That's not how this game works. Instead, units consume resources over time as they are built, starting at a basic rate that can be increased by dispatching more builder units to assist in construction. The result is that you're not simply banking large amounts of resources, until you ultimately have enough to construct a major unit. Rather, you strive to strike a balance between the rate at which your resources are increasing, and the rate that you're expending them, avoiding either wasting resources by exceeding your storage capacity or starving your construction output, bring that to a crawl.

Part of striking the right balance is ensuring you don't waste anything. According to this level wrap up screen, I certainly failed at that.

The units you can build can be broken up a couple of ways. First, there are three tiers of units, and an additional experimental tier. While each of this game's three factions have a different take on certain units, adding in abilities that make them amphibious, or sometimes have a unit that the other races don't, they are mostly the same, so you'll have access to a few combat units and scouts at tech 1, transports, gunships, and shield units at tech 2, and spy planes, battleships, and siege bots when you get to tech 3, no matter who you are playing as, making the game fairly symmetrical, unless you really want to get into the kind of theory crafting about unit hp versus damage, etc, you know, the kind of stuff that won't matter unless you're really hardcore. The same can't be said for the experimentals though, where each race has it's unique set of three different units that can only be described as massive. I'll get into those later, but it's really the one place where it felt like the three races actually differed by more than a few quirks in building upgrades or unit special abilities.

Then there is simply building the units, which also bucks the norm. In this game you don't have to go through all of the trouble of constructing an armory, then researching a new unit, then building that unit at a factory. In Supreme Commander there are three different factories - air, land, and naval - with each building it's respective type of units. To make higher tiers you just upgrade a factory to that tier, as any factory can build units of equal or lesser tiers. So, just to be clear, if you want to build a tech 3 spy plane to find out what your enemy is up to, you just build a tech 1 air factory with your engineer or commander unit (more of those later), click the upgrade to tech 2 button, wait, click the upgrade to tech 3 button, wait, and then build a plane. I do prefer this system to the much more convoluted ones I've seen before in some games, as it allows much more direct unit production, and generally less memorizing of some complex tech tree.

One of the more unique abilities in this game. The Cybran race has amphibious destroyers. So those bad boys can come waltzing into the enemy base, proving you're not shipping around.

There are more buildings than just factories though. What I ended up building the most were defensive structures. Those would be your anti-air turrets, your point defenses, and your torpedo launchers. Those guys are, when deployed properly, an extremely potent means of securing your base from unwanted intruders. Later on you'll be looking at defenses such as tactical missile or strategic missile defense, which would protect against short range high damage missiles or nukes, or a shield structure to catch artillery or enemy unit attacks that makes it through your walls and other defenses. There are also the offensive counterparts to those things - your missile launchers and artillery, as well as support structures like air refueling stations that will keep your air units flying or sensors that detect incoming enemies.

Taking things to another level of complexity is the way certain buildings interact with each other, through something called adjacency bonuses. Place certain buildings next to others, sharing a full edge, and you'll get a nice little bonus, depending on what you combine. If you place mass or energy storage structures next to your mass and energy producers, you'll increase their production, so for example, you can make a tier three mass extractor 50% more productive by surrounding it with 4 mass storage buildings. Other structures, like shields or sensors, have their resource tax decreased by putting them next to your energy reactors, making it a good idea to place shields next to your reactors to reduce the cost of keeping your base protected, as well preventing some damage to the highly volatile structures.

When I say highly volatile, I mean it. Here is a before and after shot. All it took was two salvos of three tech 2 tactical missiles - one to bring down the shield, and another to take out the generator. The explosion also destroyed a tech 1 land factory, a tech 3 shield generator, and a tech 2 power generator, as well as severely damaging other nearby structures. As deadly as this is, when your commander melts down, it's even worse, so try and avoid blowing up your own base.

Now say you do want to make short work of an enemy base. A great way to do that is with some of those experimental units. The three races in this game are the UEF, Cybran, and Aeon, roughly making each the humans, the cyborgs, and the alien powered humans. Each maintains 3 experimental weapons, which are built not at factories, but by tech 3 engineers. The UEF have the land based Fatboy, with it's massive range on it's four mounted turrets, and it's ability to double as a mobile land factory; the Atlantis submersible aircraft carrier with it's own compliment of sensors and weapons; and the Mavor strategic artillery, which, if built, means you've won the game, since it's range encompasses the entire map and it's damage in enormous. The Aeon have the CZAR  flying aircraft carrier, which can build and store units, and packs a nasty punch itself, even in death, where it can crash land and deal massive damage to whatever is underneath it; the Tempest battleship with a high damage oblivion cannon; or the Colossus assault bot, which is amphibious, and so massive that it can crush units beneath it's feet. The Cybran have access to the Soul Ripper flying gunship, which is great for razing your enemy's front lines, so long as you don't encounter too many aircraft; the Monkylord, which is amphibious, hides from sensors, and has a powerful laser to cut through shields in seconds; the Scathis is a mobile rapid fire artillery, that, while inaccurate, has a large damage radius, and will fire so long as you have the energy to power it. Experimentals are perhaps the most enjoyable part of the game, though they require massive amounts of recourses and time, such as the Mavor, which takes 300 minutes to build if you don't stack plenty of extra engineers on it. These massive units aren't indestructible though, and a good force of tech 3 units can take all of them out - they just make the game that much more enjoyable, because the outcome can hinge on a few well used experimentals.

Yeah, this thing takes 300 minutes to build, though you can stack plenty of engineers and your commander on it to build faster, consuming resources at a faster rate as well. Or you can do what I did for this screen shot - turn on cheats.

So I hope you're beginning to understand just how massive this game is, since currently, in MS Word I'm almost done with page 3, and I'm still on the basic mechanics of the game. I haven't even mentioned things like your commander, which is an extremely powerful engineer and combat unit early on in the game, but that can be upgraded to keep pace with the other tech tiers, the ability in this game to reclaim everything from trees to downed units to greatly increase your mass and energy, capturing resource nodes and other buildings, how you can chain orders, set patrol paths, make your factories build a certain sequence of units forever, dispatching them to a certain location where air transport units are waiting to ferry them to the battle - all without any additional input from you. So yes, massive is an appropriate to describe the underlying game, which should be evident when you search for the keyboard short cuts and realize how long this list is, covering things like using Shift + Control + Alt + Right Click to move a group with the slowest unit.

You can see what orders you have issued. There are several air transports moving units from my factories in the upper right to the lower center, along the purple line. Two sets of engineers to build structures, along the yellow lines. A unit patrolling an area over my naval fleet in a blue loop, and some other units that are moving from naval factories to join the fleet.

While the mechanics are there for a potentially great game, where everything starts to fall apart is when you try and play it, particularly the way I play games - the single player campaign. Each faction has it's own 6 mission campaign, which covers the end of a 1000 year war. The UEF makes a last ditch effort to defeat the Aeon, the Cybran fear's the Aeon's victory will result in the Cybran being hunted down as abominations, and the Aeon have an internal spat between a war leader and a peace seeking princess. All three campaigns culminate in the firing of a weapon known as Black Sun, modified for each faction's goals, creating three entirely separate scenarios. While this could be interesting, and I enjoyed the little twist with the Cybran's ending, there aren't actually 18 unique missions, as many of them overlap, having you take on the same or a similar battle from a different side, resulting in something like 8 or 9 unique maps. Furthermore, the campaign just really sucks, with it's slow pacing that acts like an extended tutorial, not even unlocking your final units until the absolute end of the last mission. Were I to simply rate the game based off of the campaign, I would maybe, *maybe* say that campaign is mediocre, particularly when compared to what I've seen accomplished within the RTS genre with games like Warcraft, Starcraft, or even Company of Heroes, giving it a 5 out of 10 for the 45 or so hours it takes to beat all this missions, given the interesting balance in this game between strong defensive structures and the length of time it can takes to construct some serious units capable of overcoming a turtling enemy.

With a 500 unit cap, which includes buildings, the scope of the game is surprisingly large. Just a single group out of 2-3 I had moving around this map.

However, I will concede that the reason you should get this game is absolutely not for the campaign, but for the multiplayer or skirmish mode. Set up a game with another 7 people, taking advantage of the differences between the factions that, while there, are something that will really only come to light when you get to be far more hardcore than I am, and have a good time duking it out. I actually ended up playing this game specifically because I had been playing a lot of the expansion - Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance - in multiplayer matches with two other friends against a cheating adaptive AI, and that was quite fun.

So, in closing I will admit that I was impressed with the mechanics, and overall massiveness of this game, even though I found it a bit overwhelming. I do recommend it with the caveat that you should only purchase this game if you plan on playing against other people, or trying your hand at the variable AI settings in skirmish mode, because the single player isn't worth it. I would even advise you do some research on the game, learning the shortcuts and special commands, because sometimes the default way in which the game moves units around can be a major pain, such as when ships spread out in a massive formation, allowing your front units to be destroyed over and over again, rather than remaining tightly grouped together to quickly overwhelm the enemy. What you should really look for when buying this game is the Gold Edition, which includes both this and the Forged Alliance expansion. I have seen it a few times on sale for $5, so go for that, especially if you don't have anyone else to play with. If that isn't the case, then you can be in for a very fun time - 8 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Suggested Price: $5 for the Gold Edition

Score: 8/10

*****

For more Supreme Commander images, check out this collection of various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full sized image. 

Spec Ops: The Line Video Review

The video review for Spec Ops: The Line is now available.

The Witcher Video Review

The video review for The Witcher is now available.