Британская стратегия Multiwinia убедительно доказала, что даже из модернистской инди-игры “не для всех” можно при желании сделать яркую динамичную погремушку, которую и через Steam нестыдно будет продавать.

Для этого от создателей из Introversion всего-то потребовалось: ампутировать у оригинальной игры (Darwinia) сюжет и пришить на его место мультиплеер на четыре персоны. К счастью, пациент успешно пережил эту нехитрую, но брутальную операцию и уже разошелся многотысячным тиражом по ЭВМ игроков со всего света.

При этом удивительно, что игровую аудиторию ХХI века, оказывается, почти не смущает полное отсутствие в игре обычного для стратегий военно-патриотического пафоса, фрицев, коней и надрывного струнного оркестра в звуковом сопровождении. Наблюдать за тем, как плоские человечки отчаянно сражаются за право обладания огромным низкополигональным чайником – занятие ничуть не менее интересное, чем участие в сто первом по счету взятии Рима, Берлина или любого другого виртуального Изенгарда.

Всеми своими творениями разработчики из Introversion напоминают нам: игра (и особенно компьютерная) – это всегда условность, разница между рыжим муравьем из двух полигонов и красивым высокохудожественным авианосцем существует только в головах игроков и геймдизайнеров. “Мультивиния”, в которой мир, воюющие стороны и оружие созданы минимальными выразительными средствами, лишена целой кучи привычных современному геймеру жанровых признаков, вроде треклятой “реалистичной графики”, “плавной анимации”, и др. Однако именно за счет этого сознательного минимализма на передний план выступает безупречная игровая механика “Мультивинии”, сама скрытая суть игры, на которую иные разработчики в последнее время чаще сознательно плюют, скрывая внутреннее убожество очередного игровыродка под громким тайтлом либо цветастыми декорациями войны с роботами, немцами или американцами.

И, кстати, очень хотелось бы дожить до того времени, когда Introversion начнет выпускать квесты или RPG с пикселями вместо предметов и страшным восьмибитным скрипом вместо реплик персонажей. Британцы это могут.

(обратно мультивиния, для новогоднего номера)

Я многое обнаружил, мистер Холмс. Я привез вам на
исследование целую кучу свеженьких пляшущих человечков.
Артур Конан Дойл. “Пляшущие человечки”

Жанр RTS
Издатель Introversion Software
Разработчик Introversion Software
Рекомендуется 2000 МГц CPU, 512Мб, RAM, 60Мб HDD, видеокарта 32Мб, Интернет
Количество дисков 1 CD, также Direct Download, Steam
Сайт www.introversion.co.uk/multiwinia/

Семь лет назад компания Introversion Software нашла себе торговое место на игровом рынке. С тех пор из-под рук британцев успел выйти бодрым шагом симулятор хакера Uplink (хороший, атмосферный, с напряженным сюжетом), потом из того же места выползло нечто под названием Darwinia. У игровой прессы Дарвиния вызвала восторг (“графика, как во вселенной Tron! Прямое управление солдатами! Это не игра, а произведение минимализма! Или даже абстракционизма! Аллюзии! Рефереренсы!”) напополам с отторжением (“фу, кисель какой-то вместо игры, халтура, чуваки просто не умеют моделировать юнитов, вот и нарисовали очередной “черный квадрат”). В результате, вконец запутавшиеся потребители крайне неохотно покупали игру про жизнь в стране полигонов, и компания чуть не разорилась.

Справедливости ради скажем, что при всей имевшейся в игре новизне и нестандартности, в Дарвинии была несколько занудная структура миссий и ущербная система управления собственно дарвинцами, в результате которой продукт местами походил на непропатченных “Леммингов”. Два года назад Introversion (видимо, больше из-за отчаянья) выпустила на свет DEFCON – двухмерный симулятор мультиплеерной ядерной войны, по виду напоминавший программную оболочку “ядерного чемодана” из фильмов про спецслужбы. Запускать межконтинентальные ракеты из Москвы в Вашингтон и обратно под вой сирен и страдальческий кашель (такое в игре было звуковое сопровождение) людям понравилось, британские девелоперы спасли себя от банкротства и незамедлительно принялись творить.

В итоге, 19 сентября “интроверты” торжественно (на сайте слепили счетчик, отсчитывавший дни-часы-минуты до выхода проекта) выдали на суд общественности продукт под названием Multiwinia. Уже из названия становится ясно, что низкополигональный мир никуда не делся, человечки справились с вирусной атакой, а ещё, оказывается, генетический код дарвинцев способен разветвляться, образовывая четыре вида разумной (очень условно) жизни в цифровой вселенной – к зеленым стикменам прибавились красные (в Дарвинии красным окрашивались человечки, зараженные вирусом, тут красные – самостоятельная нация), а также желтые и синие. За три года нашего отсутствия полигональные жители – независимо от цвета кожи – значительно оскотинились и деградировали. Непонятно, куда при этом смотрел папа дарвинцев доктор Сепульведа, под чьим руководством мы спасали сотни “разумных и миролюбивых” поселенцев – в новой игре миролюбивостью даже не пахнет. Зато сильно пахнет напалмом (знаменитая фраза копполовского Килгора “люблю запах напалма по утрам” нашла свое место и в этой игре) и другими горючими веществами. Другими словами, девелоперы пошли по пути наименьшего сопротивления – взяли готовый RTS-мир, убрали из него практически все RTS-концепты, связанные с производством, и заставили обитателей этого мира убивать друг друга.

На деле это выглядит примерно так: на карте (по-прежнему, грубая сетка из полигонов, по краям сетки волнуется море, по небу бегут тетрисообразные облака) имеются инкубаторы (Spawn Points); изначально под вашим контролем находится пара инкубаторов, из которых каждые десять секунд лезут человечки крупными партиями. Человечков надо собирать в группы и бросать на захват другого инкубатора, чтобы и из него тоже лезли дарвинцы правильного цвета. В большинстве игровых режимов оппонент – живой или компьютерный – занят тем же самым, то есть, в целом, суть игры сводится к тому, чтобы первым захватить большинство стратегических точек на карте и буквально утопить врага в полигонах. Для автоматизации процессов захвата областей и располигонивания врага можно и нужно пользоваться офицерами, которые делаются непосредственно из рядовых дарвинцев путём лихорадочного нажатия на правую кнопку мыши. Офицер может либо организовывать рядовых в стройные коробки, либо просто стоять у инкубатора с флажком и направлять всех прибывающих стикменов на фронт (это можно делать и вручную, но когда под вашим контролем находится хотя бы три инкубатора, а новые солдаты поступают каждые десять секунд, предпочтительнее заняться логистикой и построить схему автоматической пересылки пушечного мяса). В итоге, рано или поздно под руководством офицеров группки товарищей рангом ниже собираются в ручейки, ручейки же вливаются в общую одноцветную массу, которая бросает во врага гранатами и палит во все стороны лазером.

Все вышесказанное почти досконально описывает первый и самый простой режим игры – Domination. В Мультивинии есть ещё пять игровых режимов – King of the Hill, Capture the Statue, Rocket Riot, Blitzkrieg и Assault, но все они, кроме последнего, сводятся к всё той же кутерьме с инкубаторами – для того чтобы занять место “царя горы”, принести на базу огромную статую, заправить ракету топливом или поднять над землей флаг своего цвета в соответствующих игровых режимах, нужны все те же офицеры-маршрутизаторы, много инкубаторов и толпы, легионы плоских смертников. Режим Assault – единственное несимметричная область в игре, в том смысле, что вы и ваш оппонент будете заниматься диаметрально противоположными вещами – один из игроков имеет на базе Оружие Массового Поражения (непонятная, но довольно устрашающая штуковина из полигонов), много турелей на подступах к базе и горстку дарвинцев без единого инкубатора, второй (оппонент) располагает только порталами, из которых в огромных количествах вываливаются солдаты; соответственно, главные цели, к примеру, красного игрока и его зеленого противника – сломать Оружие Массового Поражения красных до того, как у него закончится final countdown / перекрошить зеленых на подступах к базе и таки бахнуть на последней секунде отсчета из чуда полигональной военной техники, окончательно добив все зеленое на карте. В режиме Capture the Statue изначально “ничейных” инкубаторов может не быть (однако всегда можно захватить вражеский), зато есть чудовищной красоты и высоты статуи и много коварных стратегических решений – если противник тупой, можно просто окружить статую солдатами и донести её до нужного места (dropzone) на карте, заработав очередное очко, если так просто не получается, можно прибежать толпой во вражескую дроп-зону, перебить всех его плоских носильщиков и отбуксировать монумент к себе. Легко (но страшно) представить, во что превращается процесс отъема и перераспределения монументов, если игроков четверо, а на карте одновременно находится три статуи.

Мне два ящика Пандоры, пожалуйста!

В целом, игра отлично сбалансирована, однако именно это, в некоторых случаях, парадоксально обращается в главный недостаток продукта – на маленькой карте для двух игроков с четным числом инкубаторов есть шанс захватить, скажем, по три инкубатора на лицо и оказаться в патовой ситуации – равные по численности толпы солдатов будут сталкиваться лицом к лицу в середине острова, успешно убивать друг друга, но ни на пядь не продвигаться вперёд. Видимо, как раз для этого случая разработчики внедрили в игру отличный концепт “падающего с небес ящика с бонусом” (прямо как во всех сериях Worms-эпопеи). Ящик открывается дарвинцами и незамедлительно переворачивает все с ног на голову. При этом, уже упомянутый напалм, одномоментно размазанный по коллективной голове вашего противника – один из самых безобидных типов вооружения (если, конечно, рядом нет леса из отлично горящих деревьев). Устроить оппоненту гораздо более серьезные неприятности помогут вовремя расположенные на его базе муравейники (в диету здешних муравьев входят исключительно полигоны), яица с зародышами компьютерных вирусов из оригинального мира Дарвинии и турели трех видов. На сладкое полагаются метеоритный дождь и ядерный удар. Последний бонус получился особенно выразительным: под музыкальную тему из DEFCON на водной поверхности игрового мира появляется ударная группировка из подводных лодок (сами лодки, понятно, тоже приплыли прямиком из DEFCON вместе с пунктирными траекториями), дает залп ракетами по указанному адресу, ракеты крайне медленно (можно даже попробовать увести своих солдат из зоны поражения) летят к цели, зато когда долетают, на земле начинается совершенно невообразимая цветомузыка с восьмибитными криками. С одной стороны, проблемы баланса решили уж слишком радикальными способами, с другой – процесс выпадения ящиков можно довольно тонко настраивать – ограничивать содержимое коробок только базовыми типами бонусов, либо даже увеличивать вероятность ящикопадения на территории проигрывающей стороны.

Объективно оценивать качество Мультивинии как игрового продукта очень сложно. И дело даже не в том, что “ТУТ НЕТ ГРАФИКИ!” и на весь игровой мир отведено, грубо говоря, столько же полигонов, текстур и творческих усилий в целом, сколько в иных ААА-проектах расходуют на модельку пистолета или уши главного героя. Проблема в том, что перед нами результат целенаправленного упрощения геймдизайнерского замысла, начатого Introversion ещё в DEFCON’е. При всех оговорках и недостатках, обе синглплеерные игры от Introversion (Uplink и Darwinia) были вообще ни на что не похожи, представляя собой чистый артхаус высокой пробы, который для приятного времяпровождения требовал от игрока изрядных усилий, терпения и богатого воображения. Мультивиния же больше похожа на не очень скромную попытку сделать быстрые деньги, одновременно накормив и поклонников необычных игр, и любителей офисных таймкиллеров. При этом таймкиллер, конечно, получился приятный и даже динамичный, но вот просить за него 25 американских долларов (получается ровно полбакса за мегабайт) – идея совершенно возмутительная.

(Йоу, первая рецензия, очень удачный эпиграф, пиздатые были еще скриншоты за постмодернизьмъ, каковой в диске присутствует)

No, this isn’t about so called ‘Art games’, but using games as Art.

A year and a half ago my bedroom was completely re-done, paint, furniture, carpet, the works.  This was the first full change since we moved into the house over 20 years ago, everything that is now there I chose.  My bedroom is my sanctuary and it is where I spend a lot of my time, one part I neglected however were the walls.

Most of the walls are covered, (by my desk, wardrobe, window etc.) however there is one exposed section in the form of a chimney breast.  It is the first thing, after the wardrobe, that you see on entering my room, so I thought it’d be a nice idea to put some kind of artwork on there.  I’m not a big art person, I appreciate it and enjoy looking at any I pass but I wouldn’t say, go to an Art gallery.  But I thought something nice would look good and help complete the room.

As you can see it’s a reasonable sized space so I wasn’t restricted in my choice, but that didn’t make it any easier.  I liked some of the paintings available in The Sims 2, such as the one of the Golden Gate bridge, but I wouldn’t know where to start in getting something like this, and I wasn’t looking for something original.  The second idea would be posters, there is a very nice one available from Introversion here.  But I didn’t really want to pay that much, and I find posters to be a little unoriginal.

Then I hit upon an idea, it would be unique and interesting even for the casual observer (not that I get many of them in my bedroom…) but it would also fit well with my interests.  I wasn’t nearly brave enough to attempt anything like the Norwegian artist who painted a mural of Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle, (WARNING:  Do not click on the link for the English version, when I did sirens started wailing and my anti-virus blocked the connection.  It may well be nothing but you can’t be too careful.) but I thought some high quality prints of various gaming scenes would do nicely.

Coming up with a list was reasonably simple, all but one (sort of two) of the games would feature on my ‘Top 10 games of all time’ list (if I could ever decide on ten) and the one that wouldn’t is Crysis.  I’m sure you can understand at least one of my reasons for including this game, but I did also enjoy playing Crysis.

The next step was obtaining the pictures.  I couldn’t just search for some on the Internet, firstly because almost all of them are low quality and those that aren’t have watermarks on them, secondly I wanted these pictures to be a representation of my personal gaming experiences.  Plus if I take them myself I can choose exactly the shot I want.

My first was with Crysis, using the commands below I managed to get a really high quality, scenic image.  Once I’d found the position I upped all the setting to maximum (AA at full crashed the game so I had to take it down to x8), the FPS went right down but it was still running.  The beach is the point in the game which is most calm and the sea looks brilliant.  This is the picture I took, slow connections beware, it’s 12MB.

Since my last piece on Multiwinia I knew I wanted something from this or Darwinia.  But as I don’t currently have Darwinia installed I stuck with Multiwinia, this does have the big advantage of allowing my to start instant skirmishes.  I knew I wanted one of a green formation taking on a red and one of a falling crate, I also took lots of others when I thought it appropriate but none of them were quite right.  I’ll keep an eye out in future games.

Psychonauts was also a definite, from another recent piece I wrote, I wanted one of the Collective Unconscious.  Then one of my favourite level, The Milkman Conspiracy.  I really wanted one of the secret agents holding an item but the curvy world makes obtaining a clean shot difficult.  The disappointing thing about Psychonauts is that you cannot get rid of the icons down the side, I would have liked a clutter free version of the third, but I don’t want to cut it down.

The last game I particularly wanted a picture of was Team Fortress 2.  I didn’t want a violent one so I’ll have to keep an eye out for a good clean action shot, but in the mean time I took several of various maps.  2Fort, Badlands and Hydro.  Whilst I was taking these in Garry’s Mod I also thought about Half-Life 2, it doesn’t look to brilliant now though so I went for Episode 2 which I had enjoyed a lot.  Along with the well known opening section, I also went for a random one of a hill-side complex.

I’ve still got all the screenshots I automated during my Non-stop play of Zeno-Clash, I had a quick look through and thought this one was worthy of printing.  I’ll never forget how long I thought it was the whale speaking…

My poor layout skills aside, I’m reasonably impressed with how they’ve turned out, particularly considering the age of our printer.  They are a little darker than I would like though.

This is by no means final, I like all the ones here but I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, and there is more space that could be used up.  I have even toyed with the idea of turning it into a sort of collage, with them all coming together into one big image.

So there you go, comment, criticisms, ‘why didn’t you include…’?  Feel free to post. 

Crysis

First press what is usually referred to as the tilde ~ key.  This is the same one used by many games so you should hopefully know where it is.  It’s actually only the tilde key for US keyboards, but I think on most layouts it’s simply the one to the right of the 1 key, along the top of the keyboard.

With the console menu up, type in:  con_restricted 0

This unlocks the various commands you need.  As far as I know you need to re-enter these commands every time you enter the game.

cl_hud 0 – Turns the HUD off, 1 turns it back on.  (This won’t remove the guns, simply switch to fists and stay still to get a clear screenshot)

e_screenshot_width= & e_screenshot_height= – Sets the resolution for the image.  That’s right using these commands you don’t have to stick with the maximum your screen can manage.  Simply add a number onto the end, I used 7860×4320 simply because that was what the example I found used.

e_screenshot_file_format= – I’m not quite sure what the options are for this, some guides said it knew bmp and png but they didn’t work for me.  Default is tga so if you want to keep things simple and use the Windows preview tools then you need to switch to jpg.

e_screenshot_min_slices= – Not quite sure what this one does, again I just followed the example I read and set it to 4.

e_screenshot_quality – Same as above, simply use 100.

e_screenshot 1 – Last command, this one takes the picture.  If you have chosen a high resolution then it will take many images from all over the screen and stitch them together automatically.

If you type any of these incorrectly it will warn you that it’s not a valid command.  Before you get into the game you may need to setup the folders, I’m not sure about XP but using Vista I think I ran into permission errors.  If you’re using UAC simply create the folder before hand and change the permissions to allow your user account.

The output folder is found at:  \Crysis\Game\ScreenShots\HiRes

Multiwinia

Just one simple keyboard command can do wonders with your screenshots.  To remove all HUD elements press Alt + X.  You can also use the games built-in screenshot command with P.  Output directory:  \Multiwinia\screenshots

Source games

Not really a tip since not everyone can use it, but if you happen to own Garry’s Mod you can load up the maps and take as many screenshots as you want (F5 or external program), from any angle (v for noclip) and without any HUD clutter (number 6, first weapon).  That is what I used to take mine ones of TF2 and HL2:Ep2.  Output directory:  garrysmod\garrysmod\screenshots

I bought Multiwinia a while ago in one of the Steam sales, played it for a while then let it drift away.  Many dislike the game, often comparing it Darwinia.  Darwinina was, and is, a brilliant game, at it’s base it is simple and doesn’t offer much but the imagery is amazing.  The simple idea that someone could create a complex world where little creatures struggle and grow, not like computer programs, but actual life is more than enough to lift the game from the average and that’s not to mention the often beautiful art-style. Sadly Multiwinia takes this world and leaves it’s soul behind, all the things that endeared us to the little stick-men are lost and we are left with an average game.  It’s a pretty decent strategy game, focusing on simple commands and forming paths, however more recently I have come to realise that in this empty shell of a game, tiny seeds remain that contain some fantastic ideas.  These come in the form of the crates.

Representative of programs and packets of data, these were only used a handful of times in Darwinia but they become the main focus for me when playing Multiwinia.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad once you have directed a team (or sometimes nearby wanderers will act under their own intelligence) to open the crate of knowledge a remarkable idea is born into the world.  I am going to go through some of my highlights in an attempt to show you what I mean:

Plague

This unpleasant program infects all the nearby ‘winians with an infectious virus, they ‘hiccup’ weapons fire (particularly nasty with the rocket launchers), infect any nearby ‘winians and eventually die.  This brilliantly fits the ideas of disease control into a small section of the game.  If the infected reach the main population, pretty soon everyone will be infected, instead you have to order them into a remote corner of the island (or if you’re felling evil, send them towards the enemy).  Their sacrifice will secure the other’s lives.  This is a fairly gruesome topic, but with the simplistic nature of the game it all boils down to pure theory.

Futurewinians

If they land during a game and take hold, your in for a lot of trouble.  Should someone open a crate that releases the Futurewinians, then a giant UFO will start hovering across the map, it’s vacuum sucking up the unfortunate souls beneath.  However if they capture enough then a landing party will be released, the Futurewinians are like normal ‘winians except they always fire subversion guns.  For those who don’t know if you unlock and assign these weapons to your ‘winians then instead of regular blasts which kill the opposition they fire conversion blasts that turn them into your colour.  As you can imagine anyone who has this permanently will be extremely hard to get rid of, any forces you send to deal with them will ultimately help them grow.  As long as they are a small group and are alone they can be dealt with, but should they reach a spawn point they will be extremely hard to dislodge without some lucky powerups.  No-one knows who they actually are, but they do capture the imagination, should you stop to think.

Evilinians

You may have put a stop to the infection in Darwinia but there are others that are looking to take control.  If an infected crate is opened then black virii are released, this alone isn’t too bad, if there happen to be any nearby ‘winians though they too are infected and become Evilinans.  These corrupt ‘winians are like the Futurewinians, they can claim spawn points to propagate their kind, they are also immune to fire, also like the Futurewinians they can join you on the leaderboard and in some cases even win.  They aren’t quite as tricky as Futurewinians can be, although they aren’t easy to dislodge.  In the above game I planted two lots of Ants Nests and even launched a nuclear strike yet they still remained.

Dark Forest

One of my favourites, when unlocked a Dark Forest can be seeded at any location slowly draining the souls of life.  But whereas ‘winians normally die and float up into the sky (as per Darwinia), if killed by the forest then they remain in the branches of the trees, forever haunting the location.  Placed at a spawn point this can restrict the enemies growth, it doesn’t stop it however ‘winians working at the point won’t die and if moved out of the area quickly neither will the newly spawn.  The Dark Forest is also extremely vulnerable to fire.

These are the main highlights for me, they contain ideas that can easily be dismissed as a powerup in the game, but given a little thought they become so much more.  There are many more power-ups of course, several pretty standard things like turrets, air strikes and a nuclear launch:

Then there is the mysterious Magical Forest:

Mysterious because I still don’t know quite what it does.  It could just be a supply of souls for harvesters and engineers to collect, or it could be something more but it would have to be pretty subtle.

A few more notes on the game itself, I still haven’t played an online match, and given how I only play on Normal difficulty I doubt I ever will.  Multiwinia is good for a quicl blast when you find a few empty minutes, the time limit in all of the games does a good job of making sure you don’t play too long.  My one major critism is the fact that it doesn’t remember your game settings, and what’s worse is if after a game you want to replay the match with exactly the same settings, you have to go all the way back to the main menu and input them all over again.  It would have been nice to be able to setup several defaults that you could choose between, but to not have a replay function is very strange.  No doubt within a few weeks Multiwinia will sit in the corner of my Steam list, but for the moment I’m having a lot of fun.

So the point of Collect is to have kind of hub for everything that I write. As time goes on I intend to grow beyond my current contributions to the Enfield Gazette, Advertiser and TVGB so it will be good to have one place that at least links to it all.

On top of that, Collect is part of an attempt to just write more. The reasoning behind this is that the more I write, the better I’ll get at it. That’s the theory anyway.

So here’s my first weekly round up. It’s worth noting that not every story published in the Gazette and Advertiser gets put on the web and that, annoyingly, the North London Press site is awfully designed and occasionally error-strewn.

THAT VIDEOGAME BLOG

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai slashes its way to XBLA

Blood-drenched winner of Dream-Build-Play gets its digital release… finally.

Gears of War 2 Snowblind DLC out now

Typo in this one, makes me cringe a bit.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts DLC trailer rolls into view

Downloadable content announced, trailed for Rare’s build-em-up.

April Fools / Hideo Kojima 1, Internet 0

On a day full of crap April Fools jokes, Kojima raises the bar

Call of Duty: World at War DLC sells lots, sets records

The Call of Duty juggernaut rolls on

Introversion reveal Microsoft XBLA approval process

Independent devs Introversion are posting every dev document for Multiwinia on their site, in an effort to lift the lid on Microsoft’s mysterious approval procedures.

NORTH LONDON PRESS

Life’s grand for young masters of chessboard

Awful headline that even has a typo on the site, damn those sub-editors. Still, got a one/two-page pic spread in both papers. Nice.

Got playing with Multiwinia again last night.  Played a couple of
domination and king of the hill games on easy.  I also read about this game
a bit more, well, it is technically a multiplayer only version of the
previous game – Darwinia.  I wanted to try a multiplayer game but it looks
like there isn’t much players around (since its an indie game).

The games I’ve played last night, I’ve won.  Easy AI is now easy as I’ve
gotten the hang of the game.  I’ll try normal difficulty later and some of
the other game types to get a better look at the game.

In terms of music and sound, the game has no music (or at least I didn’t
really notice it).  Sound wise, the laser and the explosions are fine and
the occasional “left-left-left right left” marching sound can be heard.
The sound is average at best I would have liked to have some 8-bit old game
music to accompany the game but it isn’t the case.

Also, buying the single game at $19.99 is definitely not worth it unless
you are desperate to try this.  I got this with a weekend indie games pack
for $9.99 in Steam which includes other games.  For that price, Multiwinia
is definitely a buy as long as it has other games with it.  I’ll play a bit
more to give my final verdict.

I’m just going to write this now as I don’t want to write anyting about
love and what not.  Well the game I’ve been playing recently is
Multiwinia..an indie pc game which is the sequel to Darwinia.  Well
Multiwinia is a RTS game, albeit a simpler RTS than the likes of Company of
Heroes.

Multiwinia’s basic objective like every other RTS is to either eliminate
all opponents or hold a specific point.  I’ve only played the tutorials and
1 match against the easy ai (and lost!).  Basically you control these 2-D
old school 8-bit characters that march and shoot lasers.  You try to take
buildings which generate your 8-bit army.  Basically, you can also tell 1
of your troop to become a general which allows you to command other
characters to automatically move to a point (aka rally point) or create a
box formation which improves the laser fire power of the troops though
makes them suceptible to attacks from behind and grenade attacks.

One way to gain an advantage over the opponent is to grab crates which drop
from the sky.  Similar to the old Worms game, these creates provide a
random powerup.. maybe a airstrike or a vehicle.  These things can
definitely turn the tide of battle to your favor.

Graphics are sylized to the 8-bit characters in a 3D world.  Very unique
and since they’re stylized, they can last a lot longer than realistic
games.

Let’s see how my review of this game changes after more game time.

Multiwinia, the multiplayer version of Darwinia, that was highly expected, is announced very soon on mac (it shipped on Windows last September). Ambrosia Software provides new screenshots.
The game is said to work on PowerPC also (but G5, as the requirements state a 2 Ghz processor).

Multiwinia es la continuación del aclamado Darwinia, todo un éxito entre la crítica y el público, hasta el punto de aparecer en la lista de los 100 mejores videojuegos de la historia de la revista Edge, lo que ha hecho que el Darwinia sea uno de los juegos más conocidos de la “escena indie” y que la salida del Multiwinia haya transcendido entre la mayoría de medios más conocidos dentro del mundillo de los videojuegos.

En Darwinia, mediante una original mezcla entre estrategia, acción y puzzles, ayudabamos al Doctor Sepúlveda a liberar de virus el mundo artificial que había creado, hogar de unas inteligencias artificiales llamadas Multiwinians. La acción del juego que nos ocupa nos traslada después de estos hechos, donde nos enteramos que tras un tiempo de paz, los Multiwinians se han dividido en tribus (caracterizados por su color) y se dedican a guerrear entre ellos. Si te interesa, pulsa “leer más” para ver todo el análisis.

Estrategia atípica

Multwinia es un juego de estrategia. No hay mezclas raras con otros géneros. Pero el tipo de estrategia que ofrece es totalmente distinto a lo que puebla el catálogo de PC. No hay recolección de recursos, no controlamos la creación de nuestras tropas, no podemos construir ningún tipo de edificio y el control sobre nuestras tropas es limitado. Ni siquiera contamos con una campaña individual.

Generalmente nos encontraremos con una serie de “nodos” iniciales bajo nuestro poder, de los que saldrán nuestras tropas de manera más o menos continua. Estas tropas en un principio son del mismo tipo y no podremos más que seleccionarlas y moverlas de un lado para otro. Si ven a un enemigo, lo atacarán automáticamente. Si se encuentran con un “nodo” desocupado, lo tomarán automáticamente. A pesar de este aparente caos, raras veces sentiremos que nuestras tropas están fuera de control, ya que éstas responden perfectamente a nuestras órdenes y se comportan de una manera bastante adecuada a las situaciones.

Llegará un momento en la partida en que nuestra población de Multiwinians llegue a contarse por cientos y miles. Para permitir el manejo más eficiente de estas grandes masas de tropas, aparece la figura del oficial, que se crea con un simple click derecho del ratón sobre un Multiwinian. Este personaje tiene dos usos. El primero es marcar una dirección que deberán seguir todos los Multiwinian que pasen cerca de él. El segundo es crear una formación compacta de nuestros monigotes, ideal para el combate, pero lenta en movimiento y vulnerable a los ataques por la espalda. Con ambos recursos podremos automatizar bastante nuestros planes de victoria.

Como se ve, se trata de una mecánica simple y original para plantear un juego de estrategia. Al principio el concepto es algo raro de comprender, pero una vez asimilado se muestra sencillo y práctico, permitiendo manejar miles de Multwinians con unos pocos clicks. Además el juego cuenta con unos completos tutoriales para introducirnos en esta mecánica.

El juego cuenta con multitud de modos de juego que dan variedad a la hora de plantearnos nuestras partidas, desde modos bastante “obvios” como Dominación, en el que gana el jugador que tenga más nodos bajo su posesión, o el Rey de la Colina, en el que ganará el que mantenga bajo su control ciertas zonas durante más tiempo; hasta modos más raros, como el Disturbio de Misil, en el que tendremos que llenar de combustible unos cohetes y ocuparlos de Multiwinians antes de su despegue, o Asalto, donde una facción con bastantes útiles defensivos y pocas tropas tendrá que proteger una bomba de las ingentes cantidades de tropas de los atacantes.

Finalmente, quiero recalcar dos cosas: El diseño de los mapas, y la duración de las partidas. Todos los mapas cuentan con un diseño magistral, pensados para que se “líe parda” y llenos de trucos y “puntos calientes”, donde irremediablemente las distintas facciones de Multwinians se encontrarán dando como resultado grandes cantidades de muertes. Y en cuanto a la duración de las partidas, el tiempo medio se encuentra entre 10 y 15 minutos, algo rarísimo en un juego de estrategia, lo que lo hace ideal para echar unas cuantas partidas rápidas sin tener que perder una tarde entera.

Armamento pesado

Todo lo comentado antes, está bien, pero resulta algo insuficiente. Así que para añadir el toque final al juego, durante la partida caerán cajas del cielo que nuestras tropas podrán coger (al más puro estilo Worms) y que nos ofrecerán suculentos objetos o desagradables sorpresas.

Lo más común, es encontrarnos con algún tipo de recurso extra para usarlos a nuestro beneficio. Así nos podemos encontrar torretas de diversas clases para plantarlas cerca de nuestros Multiwinians y ayudarlos a masacrar al rival. Aunque éstas siempre se pueden volver en contra nuestra, ya que ayudarán a las tropas que las rodeen, así que si plantamos una, la abandonamos y un rival se acerca a ella, tomará su control con desastrosas (y tronchantes) consecuencias. También contamos con diversos ataques lejanos, como ataques aéreos, lluvias de meteoritos y bombardeos nucleares que nos garantizarán el exterminio de ingentes números de tropas rivales. Incluso podremos lanzar huevos a los rivales de los que surgirán horrorosas criaturas.

Estos “recursos extras” no tienen por qué ser ofensivos. Así tenemos naves para transportar rápidamente a nuestros efectivos, recolectores que “resucitarán” a nuestros combatientes caídos, e incluso poderes, como dar invencibilidad por un tiempo limitado a parte de nuestras tropas.

Además no siempre nos tiene que tocar algo beneficioso, a veces de las cajas saldrán virus que matarán nuestros soldados, bosques oscuros que absorberán su vida, infecciones que convertirán a nuestros Multiwinians en Evilwinians que pasarán a ser una nueva facción controlada por la CPU. Incluso puede salir hasta un OVNI que abducirá a lo largo del mapa a los Multiwinians de cualquier facción para devolverlos en forma de Futurewinians que se convertirán también en una facción controlada por la CPU.

Aparte de los objetos comentados, hay muchos más que dan la auténtica vidilla a la partida. Lanzar una lluvia de meteoritos a última hora sobre la base de un contricante para tomarla a continuación es igual de satisfactorio que ganar una carrera al Mario Kart gracias a una concha roja dirigida al primero. Y no podrás evitar una risa frenética al tomar una torreta lanzallamas del enemigo en un descuido de éste y ver cómo sus tropas son masacradas a cientos.

Como contra, los puretas de la estrategia considerarán que los objetos toman un excesivo protagonismo en el juego, haciendo que no siempre gane el mejor jugador. En mi opinión cumplen un efecto similar a los objetos en los juegos multiplayer de Nintendo tales como Super Smash Bros o Mario Kart: provocar piques, generar situaciones divertidas y hacerlo más asequible al jugador nuevo.

Guerras multiplayer

Multiwinia es un juego de marcado carácter multijugador. Su modo para un sólo jugador sólo nos ofrece los mapas que podemos jugar online pero con los contrincantes manejados por la CPU. A pesar de que éstos muestran una buena inteligencia artificial, el juego pierde gran parte de su encanto sin el modo multijugador.

Como todo en Multiwinia, el sistema de partidas es sencillo, incluso demasiado. Tenemos la opción de crear una partida, o de unirnos a alguna creada por alguien. A la hora de crear la partida nos encontraremos con un número limitado de opciones, que a pesar de ser más que suficientes, se antojan algo escasas. Especialmente, se echa de menos no poder elegir qué objetos pueden aparecer en la partida y cuáles no. También es especialmente sangrante que no podamos poner una contraseña a nuestra partida.

Además, tampoco existen servidores dedicados, por lo que dado a la corta duración de las partidas y que la tasa de refresco de la lista de partidas disponibles es de dudosa calidad, nos encontramos en que a veces nos costará entrar en alguna partida con un sitio libre.

Pero no se me alarmen, los creadores del juego ya están trabajando en subsanar casi todos los errores comentados anteriormente mediante un parche que juran que no tardará mucho en salir. Así esperamos que sea.

Retrowinia

El principal legado que ha dejado Darwinia a su sucesor es su estilo gráfico de marcado carácter retro. Los protagonistas del juego son una buena muestra de ello: simples monigotes de un solo color de aspecto pixelado que parecen recién sacados de un juego de 8 bits. Además, nuestros Multiwinians son planos, como si fuesen muñecos de papel.

Nuestras tropas se pasean por escenarios tridimensionales en los que, de manera totalmente premeditada, aparece la malla de su modelado 3D, dándole al universo de Multiwinia un aspecto de arcaica artificialidad. Los escenarios están decorados con colores imposibles en un paisaje real, lo que remarca que nos encontramos en un mundo virtual.

Los paisajes no tienen demasiados detalles. Aparte de los (pocos) edificios de los que disponen los Multiwinians, en algunos escenarios nos encontramos con estatuas de pobre geometría inspiradas en los maoais de la Isla de Pascua, y los árboles cuyo aspecto choca con su “tosco” entorno, y es que parecen estar hechos de luz azul y roja (¿energía eléctrica?), que da un toque onírico al conjunto final.

Además veremos multitud de guiños a juegos viejos, como el caso de los ataques aéreos, en los que las naves encargadas de realizarlos son bastante similares a los invasores de Space Invaders, o los monstruos que salen de nuestros huevos, que parecen recién sacados de algún arcade ochentero.

Los sonidos del juego también nos retrotraen a épocas de los videojuegos más antiguos. El efecto predominante (el disparo de los lasers de nuestros Multiwinians) son buena muestra de ello. En cuanto a la música, poco que comentar: encaja perfectamente con el aire artificial y sencillo del juego, dando como resultado extrañas piezas de ambient electrónico que nos acompañarán sin apenas molestarnos.

Conclusiones

A pesar de tener sus fallos, sobretodo en su planteamiento del online, éstos no consiguen empañar el resultado final: un juego de estrategia, que alejándose de mecánicas ya anquilosadas, toma los elementos más básicos de este género y los reduce a su mínima expresión para dar un juego fresco y sencillo, pero a su vez lo suficientemente profundo. La cantidad y variedad de modos de juego le dan una durabilidad bastante grande, y los objetos le dan un toque de locura propio de los juegos multijugador de Nintendo. Además su estética atrevida y abiertamente retro, le da un plus antes los fans de los juegos con estética extraña.

Pocas excusas justifican el no comprar este juego, ya que tiene un precio ajustado (20$ en Steam, un precio similar en formato físico y una atractiva versión de lujo para los más frikis), tiene planeada su salida para Mac y Linux (sí, habéis oido bien, Linux), sus requisitos son bastante bajos y está traducido. Además, los creadores ya trabajan en solventar muchos de sus fallos y acaban de lanzar una demo para que se pueda probar el online (la anterior era sólo para un jugador).

Jugabilidad: 10
Gráficos: 8
Musica / Sonido: 7

Why hello there listeners. Some of you may have gotten the impression from our podcast and website that we play pretty much nothing but Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (or Space Siege, but Vella’s not proud of that one). This is not the case, because we’re also massive fans of smart indie titles like Defcon and Multiwinia, to pick two not entirely at random.

You see, we love Introversion Software, that small band of British devs responsible for those games. Seeing as how our community has, you know, grown up to a certain degree since its inception we wanted to do something fun to mark our continued rise to dominance. So we thought we’d do something other grown up sites do and hold a competition. Certain J-Server members bumped into an Introversion staff member or two at last year’s PC Gamer UK Showdown, so they seemed the obvious folk to ask for some help. And help they have.

So, thanks to Introversion’s generosity and by way of celebrating our (and their) continued existence, we’re delighted to bring you the J-Server Podcast Design a Darwinian competition.

The game Multiwinia features a few variations on the traditional Darwinian lifeform. They’ve formed different coloured tribes for one thing, but players may also have been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of attacks by Futurewinians and Evilwinians. Clearly, there’s some space to be creative here.

We want you to design a new type of Darwinian. It can be anything, from the curly mop wearing Alan Davieswinian to the greatcoat wearing, mystery solving Jonathan Creekwinian. You can just write to tell us about it, but we’d prefer an image or scan of a drawing to go with it, plus anything else you feel like throwing in. Give your ‘winian tribe a name, give it a past, and tell us what it’s most likely to be found doing in-game.

The Darwinian in it's Natural Habitat (Polygonal hills)

The prize is a boxed copy of each of Introversion’s great games. That’s a copy of Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia and Multiwinia. Pictures here.

Send all of your entries to this email address, putting the name of your ‘winian in the subject line. If you win, we’ll contact you for delivery details.

The Rules:

• Anyone, anywhere, is eligible to enter. Naturally, all the podcast crew are excluded as we’re running the thing. One entry per person please.
• The winning entry will be chosen by the podcast crew. We’re looking for the funniest, the maddest, or the just plain most creative. Our decision is final.
• We’ll put the winning entry and the real name of the winner on our website after the judging.
• The closing date for the competition is the 31st January 2009.

Just got an email from the editor to let me know the mag is now available in print in the US and digitally as a PDF everywhere else. It contains (among other fine things) my review of Multiwinia from a while back. If you’re so inclined, details on how to get a copy can be found here. Please splash out a few quid if you have it – indie gaming ftw!

במשחק זה תצטרכו לכבוש כוכבים ע”י שליחת ספינות חלל לכוכב. בכל כוכב יהיה מס’ מסוים של ספינות חלל שתצטרכו לשלוח, המס’ רשום בד”כ (לפי הרמה) על הכוכב. כל כוכב מייצר ספינות חלל, ככל שהכוכב יותר גדול כך היצור שלו גדול יותר.
למשחק יש גם גרסת מחשב שתוכלו להוריד בחינם כאן, והוא דומה מאוד גם למשחק המחשב Multiwinia.

הורדה:

Valve have released the demo for their upcoming co-operative zombie survival FPS Left 4 Dead to pre-order customers, and according to 1UP will be opening it to everyone from the 11th November. Unusually, the demo’s multiplayer mode will be shut off when the game releases on the 18th, giving most players just one week to try it out. We’ll see if this experiment to prevent people sticking with the demo indefinitely causes grief or goes by without complaint; the reaction to the absence of multiplayer in the Multiwinia demo recently caused developers Introversion to relent and release a new online-enabled edition. It’s worth remembering that Valve typically have occasional free weekends for their multiplayer shooters, so other opportunities to evaluate the game should come up.

The Left 4 Dead demo is available on Steam, and the new Multiwinia demo can be downloaded from Introversion. We reviewed the original demo earlier, and found it interesting if not very deep.

I’ve just started over at The Indie Game Mag, and my first assignment was reviewing Multiwinia. I describe it thusly:

Multiwinia takes the best bits of Introversion’s greatest hit Darwinia (namely the aesthetic, the sound design and the little green Darwinians) and straps them to the frame of a very basic multiplayer real-time strategy game.

And then go on to explain why you really should have a go of it.

King Of The Hill
The Eternal Gardians 古古
Pursuit of Victory 古古古
The Holy Tree 古古古古

Capture The Statue
Mountain of Lost Souls 古古

Rocket Riot
The Second Beginning 古古古

Embarrassingly, I completely missed this. Only learned about it today. Introversion Software have a new game out! Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest was released on September 19th, so I’m rather late to the party here. Admittedly, I was on honeymoon when it came out, but I had no idea it even existed! And since I’m a fan of Introversion’s games, that’s a poor show on my part.

Multiwina is the sort-of sequel to 2005’s utterly brilliant Darwinia: a stripped-down RTS in which a virtual world populated by little flat stick-men has been infested with nasty viruses and it’s up to you to get rid of them all and return Darwinia to its utopian state.

Multiwinia takes place after Darwinia was saved from the viruses. Now the Darwinians have split into different tribes and are waging war on each other. It’s up to you to take control of one of the factions and beat all the others!

Except…

The story only exists on Multiwinia’s website. The actual game is story-less. It’s a collection of multiplayer game modes (King of the Hill, Domination and so on), with up to 4 players. You can play all of the maps in singleplayer mode, with the computer AI filling in for human opponents, but there’s no ‘Campaign’ mode. That’s a shame, in my opinion, since I’m not much of a multiplayer gamer. I really only play singleplayer games, and a ‘beat one map to unlock the next’ progression model, with a story attached to the maps would have been a dream come true. Of course, it would really have been an expansion pack for Darwinia if that was the case, but that would have been no bad thing.

Also slightly disappointing is Multiwinia’s interface. It’s very easy to navigate, which is excellent, but Darwinia had geeky in-jokes (such as fake pirate intros of the sort that I remember from my C64 and Amiga-playing days), and a nice sweeping cinematic camera intro, and the front-end was just a map of the Darwinia world, with available locations highlighted. It had charm. Multiwinia feels a bit soulless. Flat, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Of course, that’s all window-dressing, so to speak. The only real important thing is how Multiwinia plays. Luckily, it plays brilliantly. I’ve been glued to it all morning. It’s a really stripped-down RTS (hardly any unit types, no resource management, no possibility of tank-rushing or turtling) in which you just fight the other factions. You’re in battle within seconds, and the fighting just continues until either time runs out or the other players are wiped out. It’s frenetic and brilliant for it. It’s got definite just-one-more-go addictiveness, and for £15 you’d be a fool not to buy it. It’s also pretty forgiving in terms of system requirements:

• 2.0 GHz CPU
• 512 MB RAM
• Windows XP or Vista
• GeForce 6200 or Radeon 9600 series
• Internet Connection for multiplayer games

And it only takes up 62 megabytes of hard drive space!

We thought it was a preview, but then we learned the game had been released on the weekend of the Showdown. But it’s close enough for jazz, so read on for our not-quite exclusive thoughts on Multiwinia.

From Introversion, the self styled ‘last of the bedroom coders’ comes the multiplayer iteration of Darwinia. But don’t be fooled, despite surface appearances it plays completely differently to the inspired strategy game that saw you guiding the angular but strangely lovable Darwinians in a quest to defeat the omnipresent threat of invading computer viruses. In fact, if I was pushed to make a comparison, I’d say that Multiwinia, in some respects, is a lot more like pinball.

Why? Find out beneath the cut.
Ok, in several very important ways it has nothing to do with pinball. You won’t find any physic’s based ball bearing action here, instead you’ll be leading your chosen colour of Darwinian to dominance against the other pesky colours vying for the same territory. You’ll have direct control over your Darwinians this time around, and you’ll even be able to form them into organised units, where they’ll gain Rourke’s Drift level effectiveness with their lazers, but leave themselves vulnerable to a well tossed grenade.

Even though you direct your Darwinians instead of gently herding them, they still act like a rowdy and adorable rabble, even as they toddle towards certain death. Introversion have worked hard to retain the wonderful sense of personality and self-awareness we loved in Darwinia. As well as the Darwinians themselves, and the unerringly gorgeous environments, there are plenty of cheeky gaming references hidden away within the game too. We’ll leave you to discover those for yourself.

Depending on the game mode you select you’ll be taking and holding capture points or escorting gigantic statues back to your base, either way there will be pitched battles on the beautiful polygonal plains as you fight to secure territory, or to capture the gamechanging special weapons boxes that fall gracefully from the sky.

Ah yes, the upgrades. They descend upon random parts of the map, and could contain anything from rocket turrets that sprout twenty feet tall at a location of your choosing and nuke any approaching enemy darwinians, to the scary and Borg-like Futurewinians, who, as Introversion dev Ash demonstrated, spend a few minutes buzzing about the map in a massive UFO abducting helpless Darwinians before eventually invading. They’re little grey Darwinians with tiny horns, and whenever they shoot a Darwinian that Darwinian instantly becomes a Futurewinian. If not stopped quickly, they can assimilate the entire map in minutes.

There are many more, you can call in Defcon style nuclear strikes, or call in a dangerous ‘Squad’, as seen in Darwinia, Or you can summon a colony of minute ants to bother your enemy forces and clog up their spawn points.

All of this makes for a completely nuts gaming experience, which is where the pinball reference comes in. It’s that ‘multiball’ feeling, where suddenly all the basic rules of the game go out of the window and you’re left desperately slapping the flippers in hope as the chaos unfolds in front of you. You’ll be swarming in on a poorly defended capture point only to see a huge turret sprout in front, mowing down your forces with aplomb. Sometimes words will appear on the screen and mad things will happen. At one point a message appeared announcing ‘Ultra Death!’, at which point all Darwinians went turbo and began firing at twice the speed, utterly wiping each other out.

It’s about as long as a game of pinball as well. An average match will normally be wrapped up in about ten minutes. The controls feel slightly odd, being co-developed for the 360 means you’ll be doing some unusual mousework. You can’t select units by drawing boxes, you’ll be holding LMB to catch them in an expanding ring. There’s no cursor to speak of either, your mouse movements guide you around the map. Once you get used to this it soon begins to feel fairly intuitive.

It’s fast and accessible strategy, and as such not something which PC gamers are going to be entirely used to. There’s no base building, only one unit, and no number crunching or health bars. It’s not about turtling and overwhelming your enemy forces, it’s about snap decisions and making the best of your upgrades. Most importantly: it’s about fun. Gleaming, explosive, pixellated fun. Sometimes it’s hard to ask for much more than that.

Ludo out.

Nein, es besteht keine Notwendigkeit, auszuwandern oder sein Trommelfell operativ entfernen zu lassen, die Flippers haben jetzt kein eigenes Videospiel. Aber es gibt einen Prototypen eines Plattformers, dessen Name ebenfalls Flippers lautet, der einem im Gegensatz zu den grauen Akustik-Terroristen auch keine Schmerzen zufügt.

Flippers in Flippers sind keine drei Greise, sondern Bereiche, die, wenn man sie betritt, das aktuelle Level dreht, spiegelt oder einen irgendwo anders hin katapultiert, und das ist eine wunderbare Spielmechanik, die ruhig häufiger in Spielen auftreten könnte. Also drückt die Daumen, daß aus dieser Demo ein richtiges Produkt erwächst. Und spielt das Ding natürlich durch, dauert auch nur ein paar Minuten.

Während Flippers, davon gehe ich jedenfalls aus, von einem einzelnen jungen Hobby-Programmierer erdacht wurde, stammt Gridrunner++ von Llamasoft, einem Entwickler, der schon seit 8bit-Zeiten existiert und unter anderen für Tempest2000 auf dem Jaguar verantwortlich zeichnet. Gridrunner ist ein absoluter Oldschool-Vertical-Shooter, nichts Besonderes, aber absolut bodenständig und mit psychedelischer Graphik und mit Schafen.

Was die wenigsten Personen wissen ist, daß Llamasoft auch das Visualisierungs-Programm für den MP3-Spieler der Xbox360 entwickelt haben. Auf den ersten Blick erweckt dieser den Eindruck, er könne auch aus einer uralten Winamp-Version entsprungen sein. Doch wer vier Freunde, vier Controller und einen vollen Ipod zur Hand hat, sollte einmal folgenden Link ansurfen und sich die Anleitung dafür durchlesen – Scheinbar lassen sich damit ein paar witzige Dinge anstellen.

Dazu muß man eigentlich nicht mehr viel sagen, doch wer hinter den sieben Bergen lebt, sollte unbedingt erfahren, daß Introversions Multiwinia fertig ist und auch eine (Singleplayer-)Demo dazu erschienen ist. Sollte man keinesfalls verpassen, denn so kurzweilig und zugänglich war ein RTS noch nie.

Seit einer halben Ewigkeit befindet sich der Link zum Half-Life: Decay-Restaurations-Projekt in meinen Bookmarks und doch mußte ich zuerst bei RPS über dessen Fertigstellung lesen. Nach Uplink handelt es sich um eines der letzten prä-Steam-Titel, der, in diesem Fall von der PS2, heimgeholt wurde, fehlt noch Gunman. Besonders hervor sticht Decay dadurch, daß es sich um einen Co-op-Titel handelt, dessen Protagonisten eigentlich Protagonistinnen sind!

Schluß mit dem Demo-Kram, jetzt wird eingekauft! Das läßt sich zum Beispiel beim etwas überfälligen Online-Store Good Old Games (befindet sich noch ein paar Tage lang im halb-offenen Beta-Status) erledigen, falls man ein paar Klassiker wie Sacrifice, Fallout oder MDK günstig nachholen will. Spiele, die man nicht überall erhält, momentan in der Hauptsache das Penny-Arcade-Adventure, aber auch andere Indie-Titel, finden sich Stück für Stück im Greenhouse ein. Bei Impulse werden sowohl Stardocks Eigenentwicklungen, wie GalCiv und Sins of a Solar Empire, und Indie-Spiele, sondern auch viele Mainstream-Titel vertrieben.

Für alle drei Websites gilt, daß die Spiele dort nicht von so drakonischen DRM-Maßnahmen “geschützt” werden wie bei gefährlichen Quasi-Monopolisten wie EA oder Valve, gog.com verzichtet sogar komplett darauf, bei allen anderen kann man, soweit ich es verstanden habe, die Spiel nach dem Kauf ohne Online-Verbindung spielen und neu installieren.

]]> http://atmospheretrailer.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/multiwinia/ Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:41:23 +0000 maybenexttimex http://atmospheretrailer.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/multiwinia/

I wasn’t going to write about Multiwinia straight after Darwinia; World in Conflict is still looking mournfully at me, hoping that maybe I’ll get around to finishing the campaign and talking about that particular slice of real-time tactics, and I think I’ve been labouring the whole ‘Introversion = good’ thing a bit too much, but, goddamnit, all those Russian tanks can wait and, goddamnit more, Introversion are good. So Multiwinia it is. For two reasons: firstly, it’s fucking sublime. Secondly, this blog post told me to, and everyone knows how I can’t resist doing what games journalists tell me to do.

According to Steam, I’ve only played 3.1 hours of Multiwinia, and yet I still feel perfectly qualified writing 800-odd words on the thing. In those 3.1 hours, me and my little cyan Multiwinians have been through a lot. We’ve braved dark forests, flying saucers, and ant infestations. We’ve called in airstrikes and nuclear submarines. We’ve made desperate last stand defences and equally desperate last minute rushes, running headlong into bullets and rockets and fire and lasers.

Multiwinia does something that a frankly ludicrous number of games forget to do: it makes everything fun. It’s simple to control and it’s simple to understand what’s going on, and as a result you don’t spend any time doing the fiddly rubbish things that practically all strategy games ask of you, like building bases or queuing units. You just order your Multiwinians into combat, either yourself or using officers, and watch the beautiful, harrowing, insanely frantic spectacle unfold. Controlling the Multiwinians directly is a bit weird; Darwinia made a point of making the Darwinians (who are the Multiwinians’ antecedents) free willed – it was part of the point of the game. Multiwinia is set in the same computer system, some time after – when the Darwinians have presumably become sentient and civilised enough to split up into tribes and start murdering each other (this is possibly hinted at at the end of Darwinia, now that I think about it). But the fact that, all of a sudden, you can control them and – weirder still – so can other people … well, it’s strange, and it strips the game of immersion, breaking the illusion of oh-my-god-this-could-actually-be-happening-in-my-machine that made Darwinia so compelling. In a way, Multiwinia feels like Darwinia: The Game.

But I’m looking at it the wrong way – it may be set in Darwinia, but that doesn’t mean it should be thought of in the same way as that game. It should be thought of as what it is – fun, fast, terrifyingly frenetic strategy. If I felt as attached to the Multiwinians as I did to the Darwinians, shepherding thousands of them to their deaths would be gruelling and emotional – which was the right thing to feel in Darwinia. But this is a ten minute strategy game. When the crates start falling it’s intense enough, and you haven’t got time to sit and wonder if what you’re doing is right. You just need to kill those magenta bastards.

Yes, the crates. Crates are brilliant. They fall from the digital sky, and you send a handful of Multiwinians over to reveal the technology within. It could be an airstrike, the ability to place a flame turret, reinforcements, personal shields for your Multiwinians or a UFO. They aren’t balanced. Some of the crates have dramatically better rewards than others. The game does default to weighted crate drops – if you’re losing you get more – but that isn’t much use if you’re getting five magical forests to their one nuclear strike. But who cares? Balance is great sometimes, but the matches are all so short that it doesn’t matter if you get scuppered by a stroke of bad luckand lose – and it makes the desperate last stand all the more epic if it feels like the universe itself is against you.

My favourite game type is Assault – one player (or team) has a gigantic fortress protected by walls and turrets, loads of Multiwinians, and most of the land area (so most of the crate drops, at least at the beginning of the match). The other has infinitely respawning Multiwinians, and maybe a couple of bombs to blow holes in the walls. And, for the most part, they’re pretty unbalanced – when defending, I’ve managed to hold off the enemy for the entire match without giving up any land whatsoever, and when attacking it is always, always a long, hard, bitter battle to the end. But when you come close, or when you win, it’s so much more rewarding if it feels like you’ve overcome horrifically long odds. The other player had a fortress, for God’s sake! And I almost did it!

Multiwinia is not this: Darwinia. But it is this: fun. Constantly, compulsively, unstoppably fun. Utterly crushing your opponent is fun; losing 8-1 on Capture the Statue is fun. Because every match is full of little but spectacular moments – an airstrike on a heavily populated spawn point, the last ditch attempt to stop your opponent capturing a statue, taking control of a turret yourself and stomping the enemy swarms into dust. And, yes, that moment when everything seems to be going horribly badly and then your opponent opens a Nuke crate – it’s never frustrating, because it’ll all be over in a few minutes anyway and it’s always so pretty to watch. Even if it your own little guys being blown halfway to hell.

Yes, we’re here, and it turns out we have internet access.

We got in Friday night, when turnout was still relatively low and none of the demos were up and running, so we eschewed games in general for the day and instead spent the evening chatting and drinking with the PC Gamer staff and Ash from Introversion. The rest of the participants seemed too nervous to approach, so we ended up hanging around for most of the evening, talking about our favourite games and getting a little insight into gaming journalism proper.

We did get to see Muliwinia in action, which seems like frantic fun. We’ll be getting hands on with that today, so we’ll give you guys the full scoop.

Finally. Camping sucks.

Dante out.

Ludo here, bringing you updates between gaming sessions.

UPDATE: We’ve played Mirror’s Edge, Far Cry 2, Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. We’ll give detailed impressions when we get back from the Showdown, but I’ll just say now that Left 4 Dead really is as good as you’ve been hearing.  Still to get a proper go on Mutliwinia but from what we’ve seen of it so far it should be some good fun. Some attendees have been gathering the foam Darwinians given out free to all on entrance, and are forming a growing army near the front door.

Ominous.

UPDATE: Tim Edwards just gave me a satsuma.

UPDATE: Kieron Gillen is wearing a trenchcoat and a tie and playing Trackmania.

UPDATE: The PC Gamer Panel Show just finished, I managed to grab a quick word with Paul Barnett before he shot off with the writers to have a meal somewhere. He has decreed, with inimitable Paul Barnett enthusiasm, that I should play Greenskins. Because, and I quote, “they are awesome”. Also Ross does a great Heavy impression.

UPDATE: We can independantly confirm that John Walker is indeed lovely.

UPDATE: Tim Edwards gave us some apples – then we played Company of Heroes, 3 on 3 vs the computer. Whatever you do, people, don’t fight the Panzer Elite on hard. I’m already getting the shakes for Left 4 Dead. We’re going to have another crack at Far Cry 2 in a bit as all I did when I played it was crash a car, fall off a bridge and get shot.

UPDATE: Played Far Cry 2 again. Shit went down. It involved a flamethrower and a lumberyard, not many survived.

UPDATE: The COD4 finals happened, they were nuts and we didn’t know what was going on. The TF2 finals happened and we are realised that we are so, so bad at TF2.

It’s all over, now all we have to to is write it all up. The event was brilliant and we had loads of fun, many thanks to all the folks who set it up, hardworking Multiplay peeps, the gam devs who travelled hundreds of miles to show their games, and of course the PCG crew, who are a great bunch of folk. From what we’ve seen and heard, it’s going to be a great Christmas for PC Gaming. We’ll have previews and writeups on the site over the next few days. See you then.

Multiwinia is a curiosity. It’s a lightweight RTS that ignores many genre conventions: no fog of war, no map, unusual controls apparently ported from the console version and only one unit type. All of the variety and much of the skill comes from the use of Mariokart-style power-ups, and by default there is strong rubber-band style balancing. The demo starts off well with great tutorials that are fun to play, because they actually are standard games with hints floating above suggested interaction points. Sadly, there’s not a lot past the tutorials, with a handful of skirmish maps covering two gametypes (zone control and a Pikmin-influenced CTF), and no human-vs-human play. There are a decent selection of options ensuring that you’ll want to play each map in a few different ways, and discovering new power-ups is interesting while it lasts. Ultimately, the Multiwinia demo is more of an oddball than an essential. It’s absolutely recommended for RTS fans interested in what forms the genre can take, but a bit too lightweight and self-consciously weird for most.

1/3 – For fans only

Tech details:

Size: 50 MB (preloads the game)

System Requirements: 2 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 60 MB disk space, 32 MB GeForce 6 series/Radeon 9600, Windows XP/Vista

След толкова писане по-темата (клик), мисля, че е добре да спомена, че от вчера играта се продава на официалният сайт на introversion

За нейно съжаление обаче, вече започна “силният сезон” на компютърните игри и в момента S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky чака да бъде довършена, а и тепърва ще инсталирам Crysis Warhead и PURE
Така, че ще мине малко време преди отново да ви спомена за Multiwinia.