The unusual suspects

Another passion of mine. Video games. They've come a long way since I first set my hands on an Atari. I realise, owing to conversation with a friend of mine, that I tend to gravitate towards game play more than graphics. I agree with him wholeheartedly.


It's not that I don't find flashy graphics entertaining. It's just that their novelty wears off quickly unless followed by some substance. Take the latest offering for the multi platform crowd - Prototype - A pretty game in which you play an genetically enhanced Ned who can flying kick helicopters and chuck cars like cards. While entertaining for a while, it falls into an unsatisfying grind of watching the same little computer people explode when you so much as touch them.


That said, I've played some grossly underrated (yet brilliant) games in the past few months and would like to recommend them to you.


Etrian Odyssey 2 for the DS is one such game. It's a first person dungeon crawler which is part Tower of Drauga, part Might and Magic. You create a party of 5 adventurers out of the 10 or so classes (12 after you unlock the secrets) and proceed to climb your way up the mysterious world tree upon whose crown rests a magical city. The tower (and it's 25 odd floors) are conveniently filled with monsters who show up in random battles as well as F.O.Es who are grossly overpowered monsters that give you no experience, but instead reward you with rare items. These once sold to the shop gives you access to some powerful weapons for your boffins. The game is unforgiving. If you die (and fail to run away to the town where you start from) it's game over.
The game's difficulty is not hard to master, but a casual gamer may find the learning curve a bit steep. I had a couple of false starts and got my party wiped clean on the first floor because I didn't quite know when to stop and go back to town. The bottom touch screen of the DS is used in a way that is what makes the game unique. It uses it as a parchment on which you are to draw the map of the dungeon. The game really does treat you as an adventurer and rewards you for collecting information on monsters and completing the map accurately. The F.O.Es are the only enemies visible on the map as different coloured orbs floating about and each floor has it's respective colour scheme. Once you've passed 5 or so floors, you've crossed a stratum and can continue from there rather than trudging up from floor one.


Then there's Swords and Sandals series. A game designed entirely in flash by an Australian company called Fizzy Games. It first started out as a game on the popular flash portal Newgrounds.com and was made by a person known as HeChaos. The premise of the game is to put you in the shoes of a gladiator in a fictional time and have you go up against other gladiators to increase in level and armament. Simple enough premise.
Subsequent versions of the games have added a little more to the mix by giving you an increasing amount of stuff to equip, a class system, magic, mana and a rudimentary skill tree that affects your play. In the background to the cartoony graphics and a guitar riff and a bunch of Australians screaming "LOOOOSEERRRR" the game runs on very D&Dish number crunching system.
The game's ever present "little fat kid" does the computations for your benefit. Every piece of armour you can equip gives a boost to a bar above your life bar which acts as a buffer for all attacks against you. However, critical hits completely bypass your armour and attack your health bar instantly, making the game a bit biased towards pure melee classes.
The game has many versions apart from the standard gladiatorial fight fest. S&S4 being a board game, with your gladiator being your piece on the board, making you spin a dice to get to the end and being marked for achievements such as most gold earned, most gold earned in minigames, most fights won, etc. Then there's S&S crusaders, an strategy variant where instead of gladiators it gets you to buy armies and control provinces for a cash flow - all the while pitting your forces against the opponents. Most of the games are prone to buggy gameplay due to their construction in flash, but on the flipside, they're tiny (25mb) and can be a good trivial escape from boredom. You can play a demo at www.Kongregate.com or www.Newgrounds.com but you have to pay £10 to own a full version.


Lastly, there's Elements. It's a card game (again designed in flash) by a person called Zanzarino whose production values are impressive. An odd bastard child of Magic: the Gathering and the Japanese Duel monsters, the game gives you the choice to specialise in one of the 12 elements and then starts you off with a deck comprised of cards related to the element (plus the Quantum deck which works for all elements).
You are then challenged to play through the game using these cards. You can play the ever increasingly difficult A.I. or you can go ahead and play against human opponents.
The mechanics of the game are robust. The objective of the game is to deplete your opponent's HP by attacking them. Summoned monsters, certain spells and equippable weapon cards called permanents can damage the opponents life points directly. You can play an infinite number of cards from your hand in any turn (provided you have the corresponding Mana) and each card has a special effect that can be triggered once per turn or, in rare cases, infinitely. At the beginning of every turn you are awarded with 1 mana per "pillar" of the element you have played plus 1 of the element you are a master in (3 random points of mana per Quantum pillar you've played).
The game allows you to have as many elements in your deck as possible allowing you to create a permutation of cards suited to your gameplay. You could balance out the very defensive earth element with the very offensive fire element. Or you could bolster your survivability by adding the life element that allows you to heal damage to your health bar. The difference that Magic the Gathering players will pick up is that there is no barrier between your health bar and the damage you get from the opponents monsters and/or spells as well as the fact that you cannot subsitute one type of mana for another when summoning. You can play cards that postpone damage or reduce it but you cannot stop it, making an average game about 5-10 minutes long. I still keep finding little nuances and tricks when I play it and it makes the game all the more richer and intricate. With over 100 cards its easy to make a deck that plays uniquely.
The game penalises your score for losing and is fairly hard to master so consider resetting your deck every now and then until you find that winning combination. The best part? It's absolutely free of cost. There is an option to donate via paypal to keep the game afloat but contributing is up to you. The maker of the game doesnt really stress on it too much. You should definitely give it a go at http://www.elementsthegame.com.

These games are by far nothing compared to the behemoths churned out by the likes of EA and Rockstar, however their endearing presence and odd quirky nature appeal to a certain form of gamer. Some might say it appeals to 'Oldies' or people living in the past. I beg to differ. Games have always been about playing them rather than gawking at the 'realistic' imitation of life.

Not much of a game without some play isn't it?

Oh Glasgow, my Glasgow

Glasgow.

What can I say? It's a bittersweet city. A city that, if it was a person, would be a person with mild schizophrenia. Having lived in Glasgow for a bit, I can only relate the oddities and virtues that stood out to me.

Pigeons. Nearly everywhere else I've been, pigeons have been like jittery neurose ridden things that would fly away if you looked at them wrong. In Glasgow, you can walk around George Square and pigeons have the right of way. They will look at you with blood red eyes, chip dangling from the mouth like a Bogartesque cigarette, asking you what your problem is. They only fly away if you try to jump on them. Probably saying "Whit yae daen, ya fanny!?"

Seagulls. The size of decently sized microwaves tip to tip flying in the sky, squawking threats against the food you are holding, little dogs and your life (In that order). I will admit I orchestrated a strategic retreat from a fallen hamburger which was set upon by these flying Grim Reapers. I felt a deep sadness for the hamburger, being ripped bun to bun by the gulls.

Glasgow, like most cities, is divided by areas. Namely the center, north, west, east and south. Each area has it's own distinctive flavour of resident who is the predominant shade in which the respective area is painted.

The West End, Bohemian students flitting about making trips to the supermarkets for bits of food and gallons of liquids, forever rolling herbal cigarettes. Affluence is present in the West End like a rash.

There's the East side used to be the domain of wealthy merchants and businessmen until they started shifting towards the West End, following the trail of money. Now it's like the poorer cousin of the West End, after being mugged blind by capitalism and promises of grandeur.

Then there's the South side. You can see so many chiselled, weathered faces in the South that you might think that the words "gruff" and "tough" were coined there. The average age is around 40 and its a part of town you can feel intimidated yet safe. Oh, it has a forest called Queens Park right in the middle.

I admit I don't know much about the North side. As far as I am concerned it's a dark no man's land devoid of human life. The two things that are there in some degree of plenty are colleges and Car dealerships. All in all, a bit like New York (from the movie Escape from New York).

Then there is the City Centre. Cosmopolitan, Cool and ...well, full of something else with a C. The Centre is where most visiting Londoners will confine themselves to when "oot on de toon". While entertaining nonetheless, the misconception about widespread violence in Glasgow is often a myth perpetuated by sporadic drunken fisticuffs and blatant rumour mongering. Glasgow's more intimidating than violent at best (Although, violence is exceptionally brutal when it occurs).

Speaking of violence, one is bound to mention Neds. No, not a collection of Ned Flanders. Neds are an abbreviation for "Non-Educated Delinquents". Glasgow's version of the British Chav. They often speak in a dialect that isn't quite intelligible. It's not quite Glaswegian as it is a mish mash of words that only they can understand. They also function quite like small mammals, being as they can only display strength in numbers. The moment you make a threatening move or display a show of strength they scatter.

I often get asked, "why Glasgow?" when I tell people I could have gone to New Zealand (land of the lord of the rings) or Cardiff (Welsh capital of ..... don't really know much) or the bustling life of London. I often wonder "why not?"

I love the pace of this city. It flows well, and I never feel homesick. I'd like to think of Glasgow as my city now, even though I wasn't born here. D'yaknowhaaymeen?