FTL: Faster Than Light - Steam

Faster Than Light: Failing To Live.

When my cousin suggested I play this game, and when I'd heard about it originally, I wasn't that impressed by the idea and scope, and if this is a lesson to go by, it's that I really should play more new ideas and new games coming up. Once someone mentioned Rogue-like however, I became intrigued by the game that is FTL: Faster Than Light.

Ah the good ship S.S Dickslap, may she carry us far on our mission!

The scope is simple enough, you get to pick a ship that's outfitted with various components and various crew members and you set sail through the cosmos in a race against time from the Rebel Fleet that is chasing you, while you're trying to get back to your home base and fight off the advancing war. In the meantime, because you're on the run and likely will NOT have enough fuel, you'll have to fight, kill, barter, trade, con and use various other means to navigate your way through the interstellar space zones, gathering resources and finally getting to the last destination, a huge war.

Where to go next? There's plenty of choice and option but each one could be dangerous

As once might guess, this sounds virtually impossible, and in true rogue like fashion, it is. In what feels a little more like Oregon Trail in Space than an actual Rogue-like, you'll be navigating through the stars and hopping from beacon to beacon using up fuel as you go. Run out of fuel and you'll have to put on your distress signal and wait a few turns, in which the Rebel Fleet can catch up to you. However you could also end up being picked off by pirates, other aliens or opportunist space faring people.

Fight time, see their ship, see your own, plan quickly an attack strategy and try to win.

To go with this, you also have to micro manage your ammo if you're using rockets (not so with lasers, that just requires power), your extra systems such as Oxygen (though not ALWAYS important if you're ONE species of space creature...), Cameras to scan your ship and others, engines to escape and evade attacks, shields to ... shield from attacks (though rockets go through most shields), your weapons systems to ensure you can counter-attack and various optional ones ranging from medibays, cloning vats, mind controllers (great for fucking up the enemy's crew), drones, hacking tools and more.

To the victor go the spoils.

While you start with very little, a bit of exploration later and you'll gather some scrap from various places and can use that to trade, buy new crew members that each have their own positives and negatives with them, new weapons, new systems and bonuses such as enhanced shields and such. In many places you may find distress calls which can be someone in need of help, or a trap set by pirates that will involve being engaged in a fight.

Are they refugees? Or are they in disguise? Choose carefully.

The events are staggering, ranging from helping out planets with infections, to losing your own crew to a virus that later reconstitutes itself as your former crew member with maxed out stats and wants to help (assuming you didn't kill the virus), meeting mad crews and having to duel them, being boarded by other crews and having to fight them off in hand to hand combat on your own ship WHILE fighting back with your weapons, even going so far as to board THEIR ship and wipe them out if you can. In some cases, your opponent may offer a surrender and you can either take it and their offer of resources with it, or wipe them out and take it all (if anything is left after the explosion). Other events include being too close to stars and having to contend with solar flares that set parts of your ship on fire.

Plan your route carefully, some zones are more treacherous than others.

There is a LOT of game beneath the surface but we're still faced with the Oregon Trail/Rogue like problem, in that you WILL die, a lot. For some this is a problem, for those brought up on the arcade days where you play and play and get a little better each time or try something new, they'll get the most from this kind of game. I'll openly confess that I've never beaten the original Rogue and have no idea if it's even possible, though THIS game can be beaten if you manage to get to the 8th zone and defeat the flag ship. Take into account that it's very unlikely that you will, if ever. But that doesn't mean the game is unenjoyable, it's just a sidestep away from those games that let players beat the game if they continue to plug away at the game and end up with a lovely plot based ending. This game will make you earn it.

The red line is where my beam will ruin their day.

The graphics are almost minimalist and yet there's a surprisingly good level of detail to them, the HUD isn't cluttered or confusion (unless you REALLY go overboard with the upgrades) and the layouts of other ships make it nice and clear to see where their shield generators are so you can hammer those then pick out the weapons systems or just laser the crew and set the place on fire. Everything is iconic in nature and contrasts well with the interesting backdrops of space, planets, stars and asteroid fields.

Systems repaired, ready to advance once again into the dark unknown.

As for the audio, FTL brings a rather calm and eclectic mix of music that never becomes overbearing or distracting and is the louder side of ambient to the game enough that you may catch yourself humming the occasional bars of music now and then. Laser blasts, rockets, explosions and beams never take away from the soft experience of the game that makes you rather away that this is more a management game than an action game.

Careful, some alien ships mate this way, you don't want in on it. I'm not joking.

There is a lot of strategy in this game, whether it's how you attack one ship and then how you attack another. Deciding whether to investigate a distress call or pass it by with dwindling fuel and low shields, who to hire and fire to get the most efficient crew that you can and many more different means of trying to fend off death and it's slow, inevitable approach. Failure is always an option and sometimes the only answer and that may put off a lot of players from giving this game a chance, personally, I wish I'd played it sooner.

C64 Desert Fox

While military simulations have not really been my interest, I thought it'd be prudent to dig up another "classic" from the C64 era. I don't tend to enjoy strategy games for the most part as I consider Chess to be one of the most perfect forms of the strategy system, one on one mental combat with specific rules and situations. Unlike more modern strategy games where it's a random number generator that determines how a single solitary individual can take on and defeat a whole army thanks to high rolls of the dice. Yep, your entire army can be Arnold Schwarzenegger’d out of existence thanks to several 6's rolling up.

Thankfully Desert Fox strictly speaking, isn't a strategy simulation. It has elements of it but most of the combat and victory is down to the player being able to play fairly well (and on Grandmaster, VERY well).

The game is a simulation of the World War 2 tank conflict in the African campaign between the Desert Rats and the Desert Fox. Or more basically, The Allies and the Axis led by Rommel. Interestingly enough, it doesn't involve Hitler in game about WW2 fighting and combat, which is certainly not the route Wolfenstein took.

Brief (and pointless) history lesson aside that could be easily disregarded thanks to any form of actual research, you're tasked with guiding the Allies into capturing key depots and either fighting or avoiding Rommel himself in his tank. Who basically serves as a boss fight and a fairly tough one, too.

The game itself is split into 2 modes, a practice and a campaign. The practice lets you run through short versions of the arcade section ranging from shooting down Stukka planes, combating Tiger tanks, traversing minefields, avoiding canyon ambushes and escorting a convoy against a series of bombers engaged in aerial combat. Most of the game is played through the eyes of the tank itself, giving it a generally first person view for such an old game and added a little extra "you're THERE" factor.

As you take on the events, you'll sustain damage from the Stukkas should you fail to shoot them down, take hits from Tiger tanks running back and forth on the horizon while they approach steadily, take mines to the treads and get hit by ambush attacks. The convoy interestingly is more about trying to get as many trucks through the bombardment by shooting down the red planes and not the green planes in a mode akin to Hyper Sports skeet shooting, two guns with left and right to fire either of them and the targets aim themselves, more a test of reflexes than anything else.

The campaign brings all this together. 5 steadily increasing challenges ranging from 3 locations to a whopping 6 locations that your tank will need to travel to in order to liberate the depots before their timers run out and the Axis win. Lose a single depot and it's game over. You can however send in one aerial support to boost that depot's timer. However... To get to the depot you'll have to travel towards it and once near enough, defeat specific events to progress. Your tank moves a set distance per "movement phase" and the radar can tell you the events leading up to the hopefully useful "Depot" in digitised speech no less. Liberating a depot quickly enough will boost your health and repair your tank while taking your sweet time will leave you with less health recovered. The other key issue in the game is Rommel who will steadily home in on you across the map symbolised by a red swastika sign. His advantage is that he'll keep moving while you're engaged in an event and come sometimes result in you winning an event to find he's there, ominous (and fucking hell it is ominous) music sounds and you're fighting the big man one on one.

He fights exactly like the Tiger tank scenario but takes 8 hits to down rather than 5, and moves like greased lightning with its arse on fire. Though you can still win the campaign without fighting him, but it's much more rewarding to take him on and go toe to toe with the toughest challenge in the game.

There's a lot of challenge within the game and even doing the shortest campaign can be either a breeze or a slaughter fest depending upon how fortunate you with Rommel. Avoiding is advised but who wants to do that when the big mean boss is there and you know you can defeat it? No wonder downfall happens a lot.

Most surprising, beyond the digitised speech, is just how nightmarish the game is when you either fight Rommel, lose the game or lose the convoy round, the music/ambience accompaniment is the virtual stuff of nightmare and the first few times you'll hear it, comes across as rather shocking to the ear. Later it just becomes sheer creepy or the stuff of nightmares.

Graphically the game is simple but effective, a lot of focus has gone into the first person tank moments and there's a lot of simplicity that allows for fairly smooth and fluid gameplay, though the Tiger Tanks switching so quickly back and forth is impossible but there's got to be some challenge in there somewhere, the particularly accurate will be shooting down the shells as they advance in a manner rather similar to Encounter's saucers shooting at the player.

The campaign mode and the game in general fall into the same situation as most arcade games, there's little random element in the game when it comes to the campaigns and the arcade sections. If you've found a way to beat the main game, you've likely found the same method will work every time unless you royally bollocks up some of the events leading to the depots. This is a shame because the game has a lot more potential if it could offer varying challenges (except in one game where Rommel turned up twice... oddly).

It's a recommended game however, though an instruction many for the campaign is SORELY needed as it's a very different set of functions to the events. Once you've gotten past this stumbling block, you've got yourself a very accessible and intriguing little entertainment for a while.