Half-Life 1 is a First Person Shooter game in which your goal is to escape a scientific disaster while fighting your way through hordes of enemies. Released in November 1998, Half-Life 1 raised the standards for the whole game industry. Many of the design principles that are used today, almost two decades later, were set with this game.
For today standards, the game is mechanically very simple, you have about dozen different weapons and you have to beat, shoot, explode or disintegrate your enemies. What makes this game very interesting, even today, is that the whole plot happens as you play. Throughout the game you will face different forms of puzzle that will require different problem solving techniques to successfully reach the end, using no more than jumping, crouching, and one "interact" button.
Despite the simplicity, Half-Life 1 shows that is not the amount of different mechanics that makes an excellent game, but how the mechanics themselves can be weaved together to bring interesting interactions to life.
Final Score: 7 out of 10.
(Were we in 1998, this would easily be a 10.)
Fallout Shelter is a simulation game based on the post-nuclear world franchise with the same name, where your goal is to create a "perfect" thriving community, 2000 feet under the surface. It is a very simple game that can be played very casually.
Our vault after couple days...
The main challenge is having power, food and water, the resources to keep your vault running. Power is essential for rooms, the more rooms you have, more power you will need. Dwellers, the people in your vault, need food and water to stay alive. The lack of any resource will affect your vault. Shortage of power will shut down rooms, like the ones you produce food at. Scarcity of water or food will make dwellers loose health due to contaminated water and hunger. If in need, you can rush the production of a specific room in order to produce the resource immediately, but in case of failure you will have a disaster to handle.
Each dweller have a set of SPECIAL, attributes that will affect their performance and productivity in specific rooms. SPECIAL stands for Strength (power room), Perception (water room), Endurance (food and water rooms + health), Charisma (radio room), Intelligence (medical room), Agility (food room) and Luck (rushing). Each attribute also improves the odds of survival during wasteland exploring, when you send a dweller out of the vault to look for useful stuff, like weapons and outfits. Fortunately SPECIAL attributes can be trained in training rooms.
The game always provide three objectives that you can aim for. Every time you complete one, you will get a reward and a new objective. We have gathered some data regarding this system that we would like to share, hopefully it will help you decide if it is worth your time and effort.
Unfortunately some mechanics do not scale well later in the game. Sending too many explorers out will require you to spend most of your time clicking endlessly to sell normal items. Which could be solved by having a "sell all" button. Outside invaders gets diminished to the point where they are more of an annoyance than actual danger. And further expanding your vault will only require you to click more constantly to harvest resources, than giving any challenge with planning or management.
Mr. Handyman lines are the best! :)
Despite the limitations of the end-game content, it is the only mobile game to actually catch our attention in a long time. It is free to play and can provide you many hours of entertainment, specially if you give yourself crazy limitations like: All Male/Female Vault, No Weapons, No Training Rooms, No Food, etc. If you are a Fallout fan you should definitely try it out!
Final Score: 8 out of 10.
Data Collected: 126 Objectives Completed, 20 Lunchboxes awarded from Objectives, 42 Lunchboxes Opened, 8 Legendary Drops, 14 Lunchboxes "last card" were x500 CAPS. 9 Lunchboxes gave two rare rewards, 5 of which were x500 CAPS.
Statistics: 15,9% Chance for an objective reward to be a Lunchbox. 19% Chance for a Lunchbox to award a legendary item. 33% Chance of your rare "last card" to be x500 CAPS. 21% Chance for two rare drops per Lunchbox. 55% Chance of an extra rare drop to be x500 CAPS.
(For those wondering, all legendaries came from the last card, which is always rare or legendary, never from an extra rare reward.)
PS: In case you wonder if those 40 Lunchboxes deal for 20 bucks is worth your money, we NEVER got a Mr. Handy from a Lunchbox, despite people on the internet saying they did.
Broken Age is a point-and-click puzzle game. You will play simultaneously as Vella and Shay, two souls with very different backgrounds and aspirations, but whose stories are more linked than you can imagine. Your goal is to solve the puzzles in order to progress the story.
As a point-and-click game, there is only one interactive mechanic, you move the cursor (and your character) around the scene and interact with objects and NPC's. Most of them only give you snippets of story that you will have to put together in order to solve the puzzles. Some objects can be taken and used to interact with other objects and NPC's in the game. On top of that there is a nice highlight whenever your cursor is over an object that can be interacted with, so you don't have to click on every nail you see until you find something new.
This game has a very interesting story, with great art, animation, music and a LOT of voice over. Every object can be interacted with everything else, we got some good laughs out of crazy situations. The puzzles themselves are not hard, just remember to use your items.
The Banner Saga is a turn-based strategy game with a heavy focus on story telling. Your goal is to survive the travel with as many people in your caravan as possible. What is unique about this game is that every decision you make will have an impact on the plot somehow, forcing you to think twice before picking any option, as not only will you have to live with the consequences to the end, but you will have to adapt your strategies quickly in order to survive.
The combat system may seem daunting at first, but it is quite simple. After a couple of fights you will feel like an expert on it, but don't let that discourage you, there is plenty of room to explore different strategies and combinations. The mechanic boils down to two attributes: strength and armor. Strength serves as both health and damage, so as your character gets hit, he does less damage. Armor protects your strength by adding an extra layer of defense, but it can be bypassed by doing less total damage. On top of that you have character turns, movement, positioning, passive and active skills. That is where the most of the strategy will come from, when you are building your party or fighting enemies that have different compositions. For example, archers have long range, do minimal armor damage and have extra damage to enemies whose armors have been destroyed, but they lack enough strength to do damage on heavy armored characters, depending on others do bring them down first.
The other main mechanic on this game is the caravan system. As you travel on foot days goes by pretty quickly, and the more people in your caravan the more resources they will consume. Here is where most of the choices you make during your game will affect you. If you refuse to help a group of people in need, your caravan may lose morale and be less effective in combat, but that might be the difference between starving yourself or having enough food for reaching the nearest town. This is just one example, the game will have many other surprises to you that we would not like to spoil!
The two systems are wrapped by a currency called renown. This currency is acquired by killing enemies in battle and doing "good" deeds. You require renown to buy supplies for your caravan, buy items and level up your characters. That means the more people in your caravan, more supplies will be consumed per day, more renown will be spent buying supplies and less will be left to strengthen your troops. This shared currency balances the game for you. If you are doing well in battle your caravan will grown, preventing you from leveling up your characters, which will make the following combats more difficult. If you perform not as well in combat, people will die and your caravan size will decrease, leaving you more renown to spend on your warriors and, therefore, making the following combats easier.
The Banner Saga is the first part of a trilogy, so the story doesn't end here, leaving a lot to be told. Despite that, the game has amazing art work, good music, a good approach to player failure (after all, you don't win every battle you fight), and a "not going back" approach that enhances the weight of every decision you make, leaving you with a unique feeling of consequence upon your choices.
Shadow of Mordor is a third person action RPG game, in which your goal is to revenge your slaughtered family. With a very polished and fluid combat system you will spend most of your time cutting through an endless horde of orcs. But what makes this game unique is the Nemesis System which sure will make you feel like those orcs developed some brains!
The Nemesis System keeps track of your actions toward each named enemy and among themselves, so any orc worth enough to receive a name will have a personality and memory of your actions, as well as the desire to ascend the "orc social ladder". Any time you cross such enemy they will have a different line depending on your previous actions, their personality and their rank in the orc army. Sparing an orc life, threatening him before combat, running away or even if you happened to die by their hands, they sure will make you remember that.
In game mechanics it means that every orc will have a rank in Sauron's Army, a preferred combat method, Strengths and Weaknesses that you can explore. They will also fight against each other to increase in power. Any orc that killed you will have a "Revenge" tag and will award you a minor bonus when killed. There is also a very interesting feature where you will be able to kill whichever enemy killed your friends that also play the game. Despite the minimal rewards, the feeling of revenging your fallen friend does make you feel good. This Nemesis System is so ingrained in the game that as soon as you start playing you will understand how everything spins around this mechanic.
Now, into the action itself! The game has three different combat "styles" characterized by three different weapons: Sword (normal standing combat), Bow (ranged combat) and Dagger (stealth combat). Each of these styles can be further personalized and mixed with runes acquired by killing chieftains and warchiefs.
By completing missions you will be awarded Power Points, that will unlock increased tiers of powers that can be purchased with Ability Points and will make you more dangerous than ever! Ability Points are awarded by earning experience, every orc slain will give you a small amount, but once your body pile starts to stack, you will be getting them in no time at all! You also have six attributes that can be increased by completing missions and optional objectives: health, arrows, focus (how long you can slow time with a drawn arrow), and additional runes for your three weapons.
A final mechanic that plays a big part in this game is the branding system. With your wrath powers you will be able to turn orcs to your cause, while not giving you direct control over them, they will follow and fight with you until they are dead or dismissed. That also means that if you brand any named orc you will be able to send them to kill other orcs or even turn on previous allied orcs.
The game has a very short tutorial that may overwhelm you with many different commands at once, but throughout play you will come across them again in a more friendly fashion. With great cinematographic combat, responsive commands, and wrath powers, this game will sure make you feel like a epic warrior fighting the army of Sauron. The game also approach player failure in a consistent manner that does not break immersion. Unfortunately the DLC's do not add much content and neither increase upon the story mode, being stand alone versions of the game itself with minor tweaks. Despite that, we highly recommend this game to any action and/or Tolkien fan!
For today standards, the game is mechanically very simple, you have about dozen different weapons and you have to beat, shoot, explode or disintegrate your enemies. What makes this game very interesting, even today, is that the whole plot happens as you play. Throughout the game you will face different forms of puzzle that will require different problem solving techniques to successfully reach the end, using no more than jumping, crouching, and one "interact" button.
