XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Sean Dibble

Aliens have landed and nations of the world have gathered to start a new organization to stop the alien threat. They have decided and your lack of army knowledge and tactical expertise means nothing to them, YOU, are the commander. Do what you can to stop the alien invasion by sending your troops out to fight and capture these aliens. Many will die under your control and nations will be taken over but hey, you tried right? 

Ok, so my opening for this review was a little dark but the first time I sat down to play this game that is exactly what happened. I was overwhelmed with what was going on and I didn't understand that half the cover wasn't good enough as the game went on and the aliens got tougher but I didn't seem to get any stronger and was out classed in seconds. But, with my second gameplay I learned a bit more and continued to grow knowing what technologies to develop. It is a game that now that I have gone through twice (still not beating it) will go through and try to win in my third gameplay.

With all that said above, lets get into the meat of the game. Like I said earlier the game starts out with an alien invasion. The council has elected you the commander of the "XCOM" force and given you advisers to help with research and engineering. The game has two distinct styles, the first is base building and researching and even though this may not seem like an important part of the game and just fodder for between missions but, IT IS EXTREMELY important! Without a solid home base your soldiers would die almost instantly during their missions. The second part is the actual missions themselves which are turn based. Early on you have a squad of 4 men and women that go out to missions to hunt down aliens or escort a VIP depending on your missions and there are parameters that you must follow. When it comes to the actual battles I highly recommend that you try your best to keep all of your soldiers in full cover as much as you can because it will help keep them from getting wounded or even killed. If a soldier is wounded in battle it will take anywhere from 8 to 15 days to recover and if they die, they are dead for good.

There is a bit of customization in the game, pending on if you purchased the DLC for it that is, this includes renaming your soldiers to anything that you want as well as their armor and armor color. This is a great addition to the game because you can feel more connected to the people you are sending out to their death and makes it so when someone dies you feel worse about them being killed off, to a certain degree. 

The graphics and soundtrack keep you engaged on top of all of this as well. It has been a long time since I have played a Turn Based Strategy game that I actually said, "Wow, these graphics are great," since most of the time TBS have had sub par 16 bit graphics due to the fact that you don't need to see all that much in terms of gameplay. All of the soundtracks are pleasant to play along with too and will keep you engaged in missions as the music changes when you find your enemy.

The downfall to the game though is the difficulty settings. Enemy Unknown comes with four difficulty settings Easy, Normal, Classic and Insane which you would think that Easy and Normal would be easy to handle but you would be dead wrong. Normal will keep you on your toes begging for a break. I have not had the chance to move on to higher difficulties because I am still struggling to get by on Normal difficulty. 

All in all the game is great, the story is immersive, the gameplay is fun and challenging which is something that I myself have not had in a long time. The little customizations in the game keeps me happy and makes me more diligent when sending my best friends on a mission plus the ranking system works well as your men get higher ranks they learn a new skills. The difficulty settings can get annoying as you try to beat the game without too much of a challenge but where is the fun in a cake walk game? All in all, I highly recommend you consider buying the game as it will keep you busy for hours on end. 

Good:

- Customization

- Soundtrack and Graphics

- Story

- Difficulty

Bad:

- Difficult settings

Scully Rating: 9.0 out of 10

Fairy Tail Chapter 426 : Blackheart

Sean Dibble

Chapter 426: Blackheart

Natsu, Lucy and Happy continue on their mission that they stole from Rouge. On their journey Lucy asks what this mission has to do with Grey and Natsu informs them that a year ago future Rouge told him Grey killed Froche and that this may be the mission it happened on. Meanwhile Grey, now a member of the cult Avatar, is telling the others that for now he will work with them but if he has to use them to destroy the book of END he will, for that is his only true reason of living. We also meet Gajeel and Pantherlilly at the end of the chapter and what has happened with them, they have joined the Councils Detention Enforcement Division. 

I'm excited to see the chapters are moving at a good pace and ether not killing you with an abundance of information while also not dragging on at a snail pace. It seems that over the next few chapters we will continue to get a glimpse of what has happened to each member since the disbanding of Fairy Tail. I am hoping that next we will see Erza, because I believe that even though Natsu has always been stronger in my opinion that Grey we still don't yet know the full extent of his new Demon Slayer Magic. Only time will tell and I look forward to reading the next chapter.

Dawn of the Reapers (Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mod) v.0.2

Zach Goodier

In honor of n7 Day, I wanted to share a fun public alpha mod for one of my favorite space empire-building real-time strategy games, Sins of a Solar Empire.  You can play as Cerberus, who use strictly Alliance technology, the Council races, who use a mix of Alliance, Turian, and Asari vessels, or the Reapers, who use… well, themselves, mostly.  Each race has their own “rebel” classes that allow some subdivision based on how you want to play that race, usually between offense/defense, or maybe military/civil specialties.

Time to live out some more of my nerdy dreams.

One major difference (aside from the reskins) is the use of kinetic barriers.  Instead of functioning as a “shield,” these deduct a certain percentage (70% seems the norm) from the base damage applied when a ship is hit by enemy fire.  This is an interesting mechanic, but it can seem rather counter to lore, which does have kinetic barriers intended to completely block incoming attacks. 

New load screens are always a nice extra touch.

Many of the vanilla units have been redone, but not all.  I found a few dead research items that did not give me the ships specified (likely because they were vanilla ships not meant to be included in the mod at all), and some items still use vanilla textures because of a lack of lore-friendly replacements at this time.  There is also a lack of abilities for capital ships and titans to spend points on, so those are presently useless to improve your lead ships.  However, it is important to remember that this is still in alpha, and is not yet any sort of final product.

Reaper models don't quite capture that same feeling that they do in the series, but they're still a force to be feared.

Cerberus and Council races are fairly straight-forward, with their own frigates and cruisers taken from the ME universe.  The most interesting race to play as is presently the Reapers.  Both the strength and weakness of the Reapers is their size.  I say this, because other than unarmed Collector ships used as scouts, there are only a few varieties of Reapers to choose from, and all of them are expensive.  Building up fleets with the Reapers is not at all impossible, but once you start using them in combat, you quickly realize that they don’t usually need fleet support due to high survivability and potent firepower.  As a started out fighting local pirates and militia, I quickly realized that a lone Reaper was more than adequate to sweep aside regional resistance groups.  Once you start facing rival empires, then you might have to form a wolf pack to get the job done, but the Reapers trade in quantity for quality, that’s for sure.  Still, I would rather see the Reapers themselves as capital ships, and use the Geth as the frigates/cruisers in the Reaper fleet.

Many structures have been redone to fit the universe.

There is still a ways to go before this mod is ready to be considered a full, complete package, but it’s off to a great start.  I do wish that Cerberus was reserved for the rebel side of an Alliance race, but then I suppose we would want to see every race independent, but I like the idea of the Alliance being separate, since I always liked their ship designs, but never really felt like a Cerberus fan. 

Markings all fit the factions, so even Alliance style ships will have Cerberus markings if that's the faction you're playing as.

In terms of the Reapers, despite what initially appears to be a balance issue on the part of the Reapers, they’re not at all unbeatable.  That may seem like a grievous sin in terms of ME lore, but for the sake of keeping this game fair, it seems to work for now.  There are several areas where I would like to see more of what’s in store, but as it stands, this is a good starting point.  There’s a lot of detail work to do, and those details could make or break this in terms of depth and immersion.  The Normandy doesn’t itself appear as far as I’ve seen, but there is a class modeled after the first version that is fairly weak and feels disappointing.  With the inclusion of ship abilities and additional content, as well as the one ship we all want to command, this can be the Mass Effect game I never knew I wanted.

Good:

-Cerberus, Council, and Reapers all appear faithfully and well-balanced.

-Units look good for the most part, just don't zoom in too close.

-A Mass Effect-themed RTS, ‘nuff said.

Bad:

-Reapers could use some support ships, maybe Geth or something, and keep the Reapers themselves as capital ships/titans.  This one is very debatable so I won’t really take off for it.

-Some dead research items and missing/vanilla unit icons in the menu, and the expected bug here and there.

-No Normandy, there is a class modeled after the first one, but they’re weak corvettes/scouts, and a bitter disappointment to watch get shot out of the sky.

Scully Rating: 7.0 out of 10