Renegade X Black Dawn [Game Saturday]

Remember Command & Conquer Renegade? The CnC spin-off that turned the Command & Conquer universe into a first and third person shooter? The game received an average rating of 75% according to Metacritic, a solid but not good rating. The single player mode was heavily criticized for being cramped and scripted.

Renegade X was an Unreal Tournament 3 mod that ported the game’s multi-player mode on the Unreal Engine. The mod received praises all over the board, and received the best released mod and best multi-player mod awards in 2009.

The developers of the mod since then have been working on a standalone version of the game. A few days ago, they have released a single player campaign for the game which will be part of the full game that is released in the near future.

Renegade X: Black Dawn is a free tactical first person shooter with RTS elements that is playing in the Command & Conquer universe. Much of what the original game was about has been ported into Black Dawn, including the ability to use vehicles and loads of different weapons in the game.

The player’s objective in Black Dawn is to infiltrate the NOD base and recover scientists, including the leading Tiberium research specialist Dr. Ignatio Mobius, who are held hostage by NOD forces.

The game takes you by the hand during the first minutes of game play. You control your character with WASD, fire and aim with the mouse, and use other keys like R for reload and E for interacting with the environment. You can use a weapon’s scope with a right-click which increases accuracy noticeably.

The mouse sensitivity was set to high in the beginning, and the monitor resolution to low. Those settings, and a lot of others, can be changed in the options, but only before the game has started. There is no option to change the settings during game play, which means that you need to leave the game to change them.

Once you are in the game you are feeling like a tiny wheel in a big campaign. Your GID forces are storming the beach while NOD forces are trying to prevent that. You start with three weapons, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle and a pistol, which you can swap with weapons that enemies drop.

Graphics are pretty good for a free game as you can see on the screenshots, or even better, in the following video. The game features custom cinematics, of which you will see some at the start of the game, and some during the campaign.

The campaign is relatively short. Experienced players should finish it in less than 2 hours on normal difficulty. It is still worth the download, especially if you are interested in the Command & Conquer universe or like to play first and third person shooters. All in all an impressive game that makes you hunger for the multi-player part of the game.

Renegade X Black Dawn requires at least a Windows XP SP2 operating system, a 2.0 GHz processor, 2 Gigabytes of RAM and a SM3 compatible video card.

The latest version of the game can be downloaded from the official game website.

Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 [Game Saturday]

And now for something completely different: Remember Guitar Hero and all of those music games that came out on various gaming systems? They were super popular thanks for a while. Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 is like those games, only without the instruments.

When you start the game you are asked to pick one of the available songs, and a difficulty level to get started. Many of the available songs are locked at the beginning, and you need to perform well to unlock them.

Once you have selected the song the game screen loads. You see the four guitar strings at the top, an animated stick figure at the bottom, and some stats that tell you how well – or bad – you perform the song.

The aim of the game is to hit the keys on the keyboard when they arrive in the black bar area on the left of the screen. The game uses the cursor keys (up, down, left, right), plus the 1-4 keys. Keys appear on the right side and you have about a second or two before they reach the area where you need to press them.

This works well on the amateur levels. The pro levels on the other hand add more keys to each song which increases the difficulty significantly.

Music tracks are great, especially if you like rock and related genres. Bands are all unknown – to me at least – but that does not make the songs less enjoyable. Most are in fact quite pleasing to the ear. Each song links to the artists website which allows you to check on the albums or songs they have released, tours and other news related to the band or artist.

The game has a few aces up its sleeve, including a boss mode where you need to defeat the boss by not only tapping on the right keys at the same time, but also on other keys to hit the boss in that time as well.

Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 is a nice game if you are into rock music and games like Guitar Hero. I suggest you check it out over at Armorgames.

Color Pic-a-Pix [Game Saturday]

Color Pic-a-Pix is an addictive online puzzle game that is more or less a spin-off of the Japanese Kakuro puzzle game. The core difference is that numbers have been replaced with colors. Here is what this game is all about.

Each game consists of a set number of rows and columns, and color hints that indicate the position and length of each color in the row or column. Two black and one brown for instance indicates that you need to fill two black squares first and then afterwards a brown square. It is now up to you to find the starting position of the first and second color.

The game mechanics sound simple but it may take a test game or two before you get a feel for the game play.

A list of 30 different puzzles are provided by the game, sorted into three difficulty levels. The first ten puzzles are played on a 5×5 grid which makes them easily solvable. It becomes slightly more complex and difficulty once you hit level 2 with its 10×10 grid and level 3 with 15×15.

You need to click on the colors at the top, or use the shortcuts 1-4 on the keyboard, to switch colors. A left-click paints the selected color into the field on the grid. A second left-click removes the color and replaces it with an empty field marker which you can use to keep track of fields that you believe do not contain a color.

The top bar offers back and forward options, a restart button, a check button that checks if the current colors are correctly placed on the grid, and a solution button which displays the resulting picture (and ends the game).

Players should take a closer look at the color information when they start a new map. Some are large enough to fill the whole row or column which makes them a good starting point. It becomes more difficulty in later levels though, which makes rare colors and empty fields the best starting option.

Color Pic-a-Pix is a great little puzzle game, ideal for a short break and for users who like to to try something different for the change.

Hands of War Tower Defense [Game Saturday]

I still love the tower defense genre despite the fact that I have not seen a good game come out in quite a while. Hands of War is a Flash browser game that does a lot of things right. It comes with a hero character, skills, a leveling system and options to variate the difficulty level of each map you play which increases the replay value considerably.

When you first start the game you are asked to pick your class from one of the three classes available. Each class has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The warrior class for instance does a lot of damage but has not nearly the reach of the ranger class or the firing frequency of the mage class.

Once you have selected your class you are thrown right into battle. The game does not start until you hit the next wave button, so no need to haste here. You always place your character first on the battlefield, and then other towers that you can buy with gold.

Once you have placed your towers you can start wave after wave. You can either start each wave individually or let the computer send in wave after wave automatically.

Your main task is to complete each level with at least one life left. You get better rewards and more experience if you do not lose a single life though.

Your regular towers get experience over time which you can then use to upgrade them. Upgrading makes them more powerful. Once towers reach level 4 you have the option to add a special ability to a tower’s arsenal which costs a lot of gold but is usually worth the investment.

Your champion gets experience after the battle. Level ups can be invested in a talent tree and attributes. Both are divided into champion and commander talents and ability. Champion related skills always improve the champion, while commander abilities the troops. This reaches from adding poison damage to the champions attack to improving the base range, damage or attack speed of all units by 1% per point spend.

Each level up rewards you with new units or unit upgrades as well. You begin the game with only two selectable units and increase that initial stock to eight during the game.

Graphics are not really top notch but functional enough to enjoy the game. The leveling system, level selections and upgrades make this game enjoyable.

Head over to Armorgames to start playing Hands of War right away. If you have played the game, let me know what you think of it.

Awesome Tanks [Game Saturday]

Awesome Tanks is a free fast paced action game that you play in your web browser. The game comes with everything that you’d expect in a tank game, with the exception of a story. You need to select a difficulty level at the beginning before you are taken to the upgrade screen where you see all the upgrades that you cannot afford yet. A click on Play opens the level selector, displaying 16 levels in total of which only the first is playable.

The game controls are displayed briefly on the screen (WASD or cursor keys to move, mouse to fire and aim, space to switch weapons ) before you are thrown right into tank warfare mayhem.

Awesome Tanks uses a fog of war system that hides the majority of the level from you at the beginning. The fog clears once you start exploring the level. The first level acts as a tutorial explaining some of the key game concepts. Depending on the difficulty level selected, you may have troubles completing the tutorial level. New gamers are advised to start with the beginner difficulty.

You earn Dollars for defeating enemies, finding money caches and completing a level. Even if you are defeated, you take the money that you have earned in a level back to the upgrade screen where you can invest it into upgrades.

Available for selection are performance and weapon upgrades. Performance upgrades increase the tank’s visibility, movement, turret speed or armor, and weapons more powerful weapons. The tank has a stationary minigun with unlimited ammunition, and five extra weapon slots that are more powerful but require ammo to fire.

Awesome Tanks is a fun game that will keep you entertained for about an hour. Just head over to the Kongregate website to start playing the game right away.

Epic Inventor, A free Terraria Inspired Game [Game Saturday]

I had lots of fun playing Terraria with a few friends of mine in cooperation. The game let you build, explore and conquer a hostile environment. Much of the game’s appeal came from the fact that you started with nothing but a small axe. Your first task was to gather enough resources to construct a workbench and house to protect yourself from the environment and night. At night, zombies and other creatures appeared that tried to hunt you down. Eventually you became stronger and started to explore deeper into the world.

Epic Inventor puts you in the same role. You start with a simple stick and some bread to recover hitpoints. Your first task is to gather enough resources to build a workbench and other goodies that aid you in the exploring.

Unlike in Terraria, you cannot interact with all world elements. The background trees cannot be choped down for instance. You need to find the smaller resources lying on the way. You move your character with WASD, collect resources and interact with the environment with E and jump with Space. A left-click uses the item in the active slot. This can be a weapon like the mighty stick you start with, or bread that regenerates health points when eaten.

New players will find the game to be rather difficulty in the beginning, as they have to start gathering resources, fight monsters that spaawn in endless waves and understand basic item creation mechanics to build better items. A good getting started video has been posted on YouTube.

A good tip for single player gamers is that you can configure your robot friend to automatically attack monsters. Please note though that your robot needs to be charged eventually which effectively removes the robot from the screen for a while.

The game, on the positive side of things ships with a functional multiplayer mode that you can play with your friends. Fans of Terraria or Minecraft will definitely like Epic Inventor for things that it has in common with the other games. The game is fully portable and only available for Windows at the time of writing.

Interested players can download Epic Inventor from the developer website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Minicraft, Minecraft in 2D [Game Saturday]

Minecraft is one of those games that does not try to persuade gamers with lots of eye candy and stunning visuals. The game’s mass appeal can be attributed to its game play mechanics and freedom that it gives its users. Markus Persson, the developer of Minecraft recently stepped down as an active developer of Minecraft leaving the game in the hands of dedicated developers.

He developed the game Minicraft for the Ludum Dare 48 hour competition. Minicraft is more or less a browser based 2D version of Minecraft (or the comparable game Terraria).

In short; the game is all about resource collecting, building and fighting in a 2D environment. Your first task is to collect resources to build the workbench. Better tools can be built when you have the workbench at your disposal. The first resource that you come upon is wood, but you will later on discover other resources like stone to create different kinds of items.

You move the player with the arrow keys, use c or space to attack or collect resources, and x to open the inventory and to interact with objects in the world.

According to the developer, the end goal is to “kill the only other sentient being in the world, making sure you’ll be alone forever”.

Minicraft is an excellent game considering that it has been developed in 48 hours of time. Grinding, that is repetitive resource collecting and killing of zombies, makes a huge part of the game. This may not be to everyone’s liking.

Regardless of that; Minicraft and Terraria players will feel at home right away. They are also the likeliest candidates to spend lots of time in the game.

Here is a video of the game

Minicraft is a Java based game. It is available as a web browser version or download version. The latest Java Runtime Environment is required in both cases. The source code and a small development journal are also available on the Ludum Dare website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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