Game Talks

Panzer General: Allied Assault is not the game that you might remember. The beer-and-pretzels SSI wargame from the 1990s has been revived in name only for Xbox Live Arcade by Petroglyph Games, returning to life a decade after the fact as a card-based game. So although old-timers may initially be disappointed at not finding the turn-based strategizing and hexes of the original franchise, they should stick around for the game’s captivating matches set during the closing days of World War II. Mechanics are simple, but the gameplay is deceptively deep, only limited a bit by repetition when it comes to mission goals and battle terrain.

Who knew that the Greatest Generation fought its battles on perfectly arranged boards with giant dice sitting in the background?
In many ways, Panzer General: Allied Assault is more reminiscent of a set-piece WWII board game, such as the Memoir ‘44 board game, than its ’90s namesake. It’s Americans versus Germans in turn-based battles on what looks like a chessboard, with cards and dice rolls handling virtually all of the unit placement and fighting. Every scenario sees the combatants starting on opposite sides of the board with set victory conditions, such as taking over tiles in the enemy’s home row, conquering a percentage of spaces, wiping out all rival units, or taking the enemy’s home base. The game system is a no-muss, no-fuss arrangement where you play cards to place units and then move around the battlefields assaulting enemies and using cards to assist in combat. Playing cards costs prestige points, which are earned through conquering territory and removing it from your enemy after victorious battles. Cards are varied, and the deck consists of three different classes. Unit cards include paratroopers, artillery, and various types of tanks and armored vehicles. Action cards add a range of special abilities, such as the chance to sabotage the enemy hand and strip away cards or lay down pre-battle damage to bad-guy positions through strafing attacks and bombing runs. Combat cards provide bonuses during engagements, which are handy when you want to increase your offensive or defensive values or soften up the enemy courtesy of something like a hit-point-draining sniper attack.

Combat is surprisingly deep. Board spaces all come with unique terrain features that have dramatic effects on battles. So you have to be careful about attacking enemies in forests and on hills, because the pluses gained from these locations stack the deck against you when calculating battle results. You also need to watch out for no-go areas for certain types of troops. Planning an infantry assault that runs through a swamp tile, for instance, isn’t a smart idea. Tiles also have varying prestige value, so a town is worth more than a plain forest, for example. Units support one another from both adjacent and far-away tiles, making it a necessity to employ tactics when defending as well as attacking. Having a few howitzers in range of the enemy position being assaulted is key, as is surrounding the baddies with armor and infantry units prior to moving in. If you don’t layer your forces and take their attack abilities into careful consideration, you’ll quickly get chewed up by the enemy.

Black Nintendo Wii, are you one of those who really want to give hands on it? Knowing that it is a limited edition and currently just situated across Japanese borderline. Apparently Nintendo confirmed the black console will be available for Europe. Dated on November 6th, Eurogamers will be able to have the pack of black Wii, with matching Wii Remote, Nunchuk and MotionPlus peripherals along with copies of Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort.

Following with the new black bundle launch, is its November 20th general availability across Europe. But until now, there are no words on the price of the new bundle. Interestingly, we heard that the company will also be including a black version of the Classic Controller Pro that will be separately sold.

Although the Black Nintendo is confirmed for Europe heading back to U.S. is a different situation where Nintendo USA is still in secrecy if there will be a limited black version of Wii. Instead last July the company issued a statement no plans to have other colors of Wii in the US, which seems we can wait or not cross-fingers.

Everyone who starts playing the game eventually wants to know the same thing: how to increase your Runescape Accounts combat level fast. After all, all the best stuff happens when you have the right combat level!

You can wear better armour, use better weapons, finish more elite quests, and get access to better areas. Most certainly, you can make more money by killing bigger beasts, and killing them faster.

The common misconception about leveling in Runescape is that you should work on the highest possible level of monsters that you can kill in decent quantities. Since XP is based on the amount of damage you do, and that damage is based on the number of hit points the monster has, it is natural to conclude that it is better to fight the monsters with the higher combat level. But this is wrong, for at least two reasons.

First, higher combat in NPCs does not mean higher Hit Points. Many times it reflects higher Defence or ability to do damage to you, so not only are you not doing more damage, but you are actually taking more too. This means more trips for food or prayer potions, and that is not the way to faster leveling.

Second, tougher monsters take longer to kill, and even if they have more Hit Points, it might be taking you a lot longer to do the damage it takes to kill them. What counts is not the Hit Points per kill, but the Hit Points per hour that you are doing. After all, you measure the time you play in minutes and hours, and not kills.

When I was on my last few levels before maxing out my combat skills, I did a lot of slayer tasks to keep myself motivated. One thing that I did differently from everyone else was to turn in the tasks that would take too long to accomplish. This meant that I never bothered slaying metal dragons, even though there were some nice potential drops there. I know for a fact that if I had kept all those slower tasks that I would still be waiting to get my first 99 skill. As it is I have 4 now (you can check my character Erikfrombc on the high scores for proof).

So what does this mean for the beginning player? Simply put, start low and work your way up. Whenever I make a new character I start out with chickens and stay there for a while. Not only do I get fast levels, but I also get prayer XP for burying bones, feathers that stack and which I can sell for decent money and better weapons quickly, and cooking XP from the raw chickens that I can cook in the nearby cooking pot.

Experience the glory of Realm vs. Realm! Declare your allegiance and join hundreds of thousands of mighty heroes on the battlefields of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to experience the epic nature of war. Enter a grim fantasy world where the armies of Order (Dwarfs, High Elves, and Empire) and Destruction (Greenskins, Dark Elves, and Chaos) collide to determine the fate of nations. Invade enemy lands, besiege imposing fortresses, and sack sprawling capital cities for the glory of your Realm. Wield devastating magic and deadly weapons, battle monstrous creatures, and join your brothers-in-arms in epic Public Quests™. Climb the Bastion Stair, carry your Guild Banner into battle, and unlock the secrets of the Tome of Knowledge as you travel the world. Sharpen your blade and prepare to unleash your inner mutation—the Age of Reckoning has begun and WAR IS EVERYWHERE!

Old games never die; they just wind up ported to Xbox Live Arcade. The two-decade-old TurboGrafx-16 game Military Madness: Nectaris is the latest oldie-but-goodie to be resurrected in the Xbox 360’s online marketplace, although the turn-based strategy game’s time has clearly passed. The main appeal of the game is that this genre is underrepresented on the Xbox 360, with most games of this sort now coming out on either the PSP or DS. Still, only retro gamers are likely to appreciate such a dated, superficial design.

And the turn-based tank rush begins.
Even if you’ve never played the original Nectaris games (the franchise was given new life on the PlayStation in 1999 and then released for the Wii in 2006), the scene here should be familiar. The time is the late 22nd century and the setting is the Moon. On it, a civil war has erupted between the Earth’s Union forces and a breakaway former prison colony now dubbing itself the Xenos. Your goal in the standard and advanced campaigns is to end this pesky little conflict, courtesy of fighting through more than a dozen turn-based missions. Mechanics and structure are very old-fashioned. You have a base guarded by colorful if blocky and archaic-looking tanks, infantry, aircraft, artillery, and mechs. The other guy also has a base, guarded by the exact same forces in a different color. So the goal is, of course, to duke it out to the expected martial music and generic game ka-booms, with the lone victory conditions being either the destruction of all enemy units or domination of the rival base. Most missions also have factories that can be conquered by infantry, giving you access to a limited number of reinforcements. You can play solo or in multiplayer matches that function the same as the single-player missions with the addition of turn limits, point-based victory conditions, and commander units that can be somewhat customized. And that’s pretty much it.

Tactical considerations here are minimal. Both sides feature the exact same units, which means you don’t have to spend any time figuring out a rock-paper-scissors formula for launching offensives and defending against the enemy. Terrain is a little more involved. You have to take account for the moon’s rocky surface in every battle. Hills and craters provide positives and negatives to battle calculations, as well as slow down unit movement. Gaining the high ground is key before committing to a fight. Planning an end goal before you start pushing tanks and troops around lunar battlefields is also vital. If you fail to think a couple of steps ahead, you can easily wind up being ambushed by foes from atop cliffs or cause an armor column to be struck trudging slowly forward amidst a bunch of craters. The other strategic consideration comes from maneuvering units into smart positions before attacking. You gain big bonuses in battle by surrounding enemies before the guns start going off. This adds a realistic military dimension to combat, albeit at the expense of game flow because you often have to slow down tank rushes and spend many turns positioning units to gain the best results when attacking or defending. Every battle result is important, too. Unit numbers are generally quite limited on each campaign map, so you can’t afford to lose even a couple of tanks through a movement mistake.

Such a limited strategic scope makes Military Madness awfully shallow. With that said, missions in the campaigns can be quite challenging, with difficulty nicely gearing up over time. You go from basic base assaults with a handful of tanks and infantry in the beginning to full-fledged battles with tanks, troops, artillery, aircraft, and mechs by about the sixth scenario. The artificial intelligence is solid, too. Enemies hone in on unguarded bases and factories, as well as quickly recognize when they’re in danger on the home front. Your rival always targets infantry first and foremost, which is smart because these are the only units that can end missions immediately by occupying bases or do major damage by taking over a factory.