An unlikely relative.

This weekend, I got to try out Overlord 2 on both PC and PS 3. I only played for some hours, so I don't feel I know it well enough for a deep review, but I can say I like it, and I do think that it's an improvement over the already quite fun first part.

But what really struck me was that it plays very similar to Little King's Story I mentioned in my last post.

In both, you expand your residence. In both, you send your different minions via a button press in the direction you face to do various tasks. In both, your main tactic to defeat strong enemies is the timing of attack and retreat. In both you can (and should) lead a promiscuous life, and lastly, in both you strive for world domination. In fact, there are only three major differences I could make out:

1) The setting: You're basically Sauron in Overlord, while you're a cute little king, quite surprisingly, in Little King's Story. While the first is very pronounced in portraying you as evil, I actually like Little King's approach more. It all looks cute and cuddly, while you're actually genociding the local wildlive, agressively conquer other kingdoms and marry multiple princesses.

I find it quite interesting how the perception of a game changes based on how it looks rather than what you have to do.

2) The perspective: Overlord features an over the shoulder view, while LKS is top down. I prefer the first, because it's easier to aim with your minions and you feel more involved with the world.

3) The combat: Overlord features "The Scorcher" among other very visceral weapons. LKS has a sparkly scepter. No need to say more...

Another thing I want to adress are RPGs. Why do all modern RPGs feel so shallow? I am on the brink of finishing the first Mass Effect, and while it's a great game, it doesn't capture me like old school RPGs like the original Fallouts or the Ultima series.

That dawned on me after participating in this thread on the Tripwire Interactive forums and reinstalling Arcanum, which I actually never got into, despite it's heritage. And right now, I'm totally sucked in and I love it.

Another tip for old school RPG players, even though it's more a hack and slay type of game than a true RPG is Eschalon. Worth checking out, especially when you're rig isn't up to modern games.

At your service!

Last week, two games which are admittedly quite old, used up a large part of my limited sparetime: ArmA 2 and Little King's Story.

ArmA 2 is exactly what I expected it to be: a very realistic combat simulator at infantry level, with reasonably well done vehicle parts. The differences to Armed Assault are rather cosmetic from what I could gather, but I haven't yet toyed around with the new commander interface, nor with the again powerful editor.

The only real gripe I have with it is, despite the expected bugs, is the strange bloom/blur that isn't even removed with Kegety's no bloom mod. And the pale greenish color correction.

Little King's Story is quite an unexpected gem. It looks like a kids game, and honestly, I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't read some very enthusiastic reviews on the web. I'm not too far into it, but it seems to be a very deep game disguised as a childs toy.

I will write more about those two games in the following weeks once I get to spend more time with them, as both games don't deserve a judgement too prematurely.

Mobile Gamer

To be honest, I am not much of a mobile gamer. I always thought that mobile phones ain't too suited for gaming, as (as much as I love my Wii) I tend rather to deep games over casual ones.

But last Weekend, it happened. Tidying up my basement, I found a box full of my old LucasArts, or even Lucasfilm Games, Adventures. And thanks to me copying all the discs to CDs, they were still fully operational.

Now you might ask what this has to do with mobile gaming. And rightly so. To explain: I use the T-Mobile HTC G1, also named Google G1, and there's a neat little app for that phone: ScummVM. It's easily available on the Android Market and it's completely free of charge.

If you still haven't figured out the connection: ScummVM let's you play the old SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) games on modern hardware, and mobile phones.

I can't stress it enough how appealing it is to revive your old childhood gaming memories on the go, on the bus, on the toilet, you name it.

The best thing is: all the games look crisp due to the tiny screen, and Androids ScummVM is fully audio capable, so you can enjoy both the score and speech, especially of the late games like Full Throttle or The Curse of Monkey Island. Allthough you should use headphones, because the speaker of the phone doesn't only sound aweful, but as it's on the backside of it, you annoy everyone around you as they hear it much louder than you do.

Which brings me to the most important gripe of the G1: you can't use the headphones and recharge it at the same time, as both use the microUSB slot of the device.

Honestly though, playing those games on your phone has a few drawbacks:

1) Controlls are a tad uncomfortable: touching the screen performs a doubleclick, which is great for quickly navigating the games, but it's sucky for everything else, especially if you need precision.

2) Coming to precision: the trackball sensitivity is so low you get blisters on your thumb from turning it from one side of the screen to the other.

3) Right clicking is very uncomfortable with holding the camera button and clicking the trackball, especially if the keyboard is extended.

and lastly

4) You realise how short those old adventures were. Back as a kid, I could spend weeks with a game, but today, because some solutions are more apparent to me now, some are still stored in my memory and the easily available walkthroughs in the web, you only spend two to three hours per game.

Also, as closing words: is playing old PC software on a phone really regarded as "mobile gaming"?