Virtual Adept

Company of Heroes is the hottest new RTS (that’s Real Time Strategy for the slow learners) for the PC. Oops, I mean for the “Games for Windows” platform, which is the new branding logo dreamed up by Microsoft to try and revive the PC gaming industry. More on that later.  Company of Heroes (CoH) is a World War II themed RTS, designed by the developers of Warhammer 40K Dawn of War.

The gameplay in CoH involves basic RTS style, but the map has a bunch of important resources and areas you have to maintain control of in order to keep resources flowing in so that you can continue the battle.  The interface is pretty slick, and the graphics are fantastic, the best I’ve ever seen in an RTS. The game has a great tutorial that makes it accessible even for beginners to the RTS genre.

The one negative thing I’ve found so far is that the load times are excessively long. I am still early in the game, I will post more on this title later on.

 

Microsoft announced a X06 today that there will be Halo Wars, a Real-Time Strategy game set in the Halo universe, coming for the Xbox 360 sometime in the next year or so hopefully (no launch date has been given yet). The trailer for it they showed looked great. You can get the trailer and more info over at GameSpot. This is a really big deal. If done right, Halo Wars could bring a whole new batch of gamers to the Halo franchise. I just hope they decide to do a PC version.

I once blogged about Real Arcade. This is Real Network’s online gaming thingy. You can access it for free, and download all the demos you want. Most of the games are priced between $10 and $20 normally, if you aren’t a subscriber. However, for a subscription fee of $8/month to Real Arcade GamePass, you get 1 free game per month, and a $5 discount on all the other games you buy that month. Once you buy a game it is the full version and yours to keep and play forever*. Pretty much all the games I’ve played on there are worth a pidly $8 which is what you pay to get a free one each month. You do need to remember to log in each month to use your free credit, because they do not cary over at the end of the month. Use it or lose it.

So anyway the reason I am posting about this again now is that I had quit the service a long time ago, but just now resubscribed. If you subscribe now, they are giving away a free game called SuperCollapse II which is a puzzle game somewhat similar to Columns except stuff comes up from the bottom, and it has several variations. Also if you subscribe now, you get another free game of your choice. Your first month is free, and even if you keep the two free games and then quit you pay nothing and have no obligations. You can quit the service at any time. I couldn’t pass that deal up.

If you like casual games, especially puzzle games, I recommend checking Real Arcade GamePass out, it’s a pretty sweet deal now if you ask me. It got me to resubscribe. You can also just view the list of the games they offer. Also a really cool pirate trading game called Tradewinds Legends is now marked down to $10, or only $5 if you are a subscriber. If you’re looking for another game to use your free game credit on, I recommend either Geneforge or Geneforge 2 if you like RPG games. Don’t let the retro graphics of those games fool you, they have very cool gameplay depth.

Lastly, if you do decide to sign up for this, and you don’t mind me benefiting from it, I can get a 15% off coupon if I email you an invitation that you can use to sign up with. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. Other than that I do not get any benefit from Real for writing this, I just thought it was a sweet deal (two free games with no strings attached), so I decided to post about it.

* Forever - but don’t lose the email account you used to sign up to real, because to access Real Arcade to re-download the game in case you reformatted or something, you need that email address (and preferably the password but it will email that to you if you forgot). However, I think you can back the games up to a CD or something but I haven’t tried that to make sure it works when you copy it back to your hard drive.

A couple of reviews of mine were posted on Game Chronicles. The first is a review of a strategy game, Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath. I give it 5.2 out of 10. Pretty much avoid unless the subject matter is really compelling to you. It mixes turn-based strategic level game which was pretty cool with a crappy and frustrating RTS battle mode.

The other review is for a great Playstation 2 old school RPG, Wild Arms: Alter Code F. This is a remake of the original Playstation Wild Arms game, and it’s a good one. Great story, very fun gameplay, if you like console RPG games definitely this is worth a look. I gave it 8.8 out of 10.

GameChronicles has posted my review of the PC real time strategy title, Earth 2160. Overall, if you are an expert in the genre you will probably like the depth this title offers, but newcomers should look elsewhere, as the AI is killer, and other aspects make the game very difficult with a steep learning curve. It looks great, though. I scored it 7.2 out of 10.

I did a review of Heritage of Kings: The Settlers, for Game Chronicles Magazine. You can find it here. The bottom line is, it’s a pretty good RTS for a beginner or for people who want a slow paced game that concentrates on building up your settlement and economy, rather than on a lot of combat. 7.5 out of 10.

I just finished up my review of the strategy/RPG game Cops 2170: The Power of Law and the review is being posted right now over on www.gamechronicles.com. From the main page you should see the link to the review there.