BattleForge Hands-on Preview

BattleForge Hands-on Preview
By David Turner



When I first came across BattleForge at New York's second Comic-con, I didn't know what to make of it. It sported the familiar high, angled view over a section of a battle field with units to command like any run-of-the-mill RTS game. Yet, it had a few significant differences, the biggest of them all being that all spells, units, and supportive constructs are all card-based.
 

The cards themselves are very comparable to those from Magic the Gathering in both order and style. Each card is of four elements: Frost, Fire, Nature, and Shadow. The upper right corner shows the number of orbs needed to cast the card. Colored circles represent a specific elemental orb, and gray ones represent one of any element. A number in that same corner details the casting cost. And similarly, abilities, charges, attack attributes, health, and damage are listed on the bottom half.

These cards are used to construct your deck of twenty and personify your strategy. You create new decks in the game's main lobby. It's a practice field that lets you spawn any group of enemies in both open and protected situations without restrictions on card summoning. With two hundred cards promised in the final game, it's easy to spend a lot of time testing your latest strategy before it's used in battle. This of course doesn't include card upgrades that are earned through extended play. The lobby also offers a friend list, an auction house, a way to trade cards, and a store to buy booster packs. Details concerning the currency haven't yet been revealed.

The missions, single and multiplayer, are all linked by a central lore with a location on the map. I fired up a single player task to learn the ropes of battle and test my first deck. My first order of business was saving a company to the north from demise. It quickly moved on to me raiding an enemy encampment then choosing to hold a wall instead of extending the blitzkrieg further north. This situation was great because it allowed me to tackle the situation in a manner suitable to the deck I was using. After I held my defense I had a standoff against the end level boss. This was an extended battle reminiscent of an end of instance boss in WoW. From there I was excited to move onto multiplayer matches.

The two-player co-op missions I played with my roommate were the highlight of my experience with the game thus far. One scenario had us holding a front from the north while advancing to the south. The second game we played had us controlling a timed force field. We were given an object to activate that controlled enemy attack from one person to another. This forced one person to defend and gave the other a chance to advance to the north. Teamwork was important in order to successfully complete our objectives. The good news is that the battles never got congested. From the missions we played, we were mostly attacking from different fronts only to join together at the end.

Overall, the game feels good and not too daunting like other RTS games I've played in the past. Card summoning mechanics are balanced for hot-key experts and point-and-clickers, like me. After you select a card through your favorite method, you can click a valid location in the playing field for the card to spawn. Since the game focuses away from base-building, you must spawn near existing units or controlled resources. Once a card is played, a brief recovery time occurs before being able to play your next card. Anyone who has gotten his/her sorry behind handed to them in Starcraft can rejoice to this. It evens the playing field for anyone who can't summon ten units a second.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the implementation of squad support. Unit organization is key in games of the genre. Your squads are mapped to the number keys for easy access and can be managed through a few simple motions. Once a creature card is played, the user an click and drag it into a squad of his/her choice. If a card is played near or within a squad, it will be automatically included in that group. Everything else is pretty standard with the inclusion of a mini-map, camera controls to pan over the battlefield, and pretty graphics. The only thing I feel is lacking, is the ability to pan out to see the whole area a la Supreme Commander. In the game's defense, the developer on the floor of the BattleForge area at NYCC explained that the main focus was to make the system requirements for the game as inclusive as possible.



Though I've never been a big fan of RTS games in the past, this seems to have a great level of depth while being accessible to new-comers like me. That said, being a beta, the game isn't perfect. Specifically there were a few things that took away from the experience. During the second multiplayer game I played, my roommate and I experienced terrible slowdown that made the game unresponsive and barely playable. The symptom ceased itself for the host, but for me, it persisted until the end of the match. There were also some pathing problems where units would split from the squad, usually to hit dead ends. Finally, whenever I was using ranged attackers to get rid of a support tower, my close-combat characters within their vicinity would storm into a base automatically, in most cases, to their death. Again, this is a beta. These are problems that can be fixed by release, so I'm not too worried.

The time I've had with the game have been enjoyable even with the problems. To draw a comparison, this game has the chance to be the WoW of RTS games. It's accessible and hardcore all at once. The twelve player raids sound like fun, and I can say with confidence that they are likely to not disappoint. Expect the game to come out around March 23rd. It's going to offer forty maps, strong story, cooperative, and competitive play. All of these can be tried out in the open beta that you can register for at http://www.battleforge.com/.

Bangai-O Spirits Review

It's great to see another hardcore game move over to the DS. Bangai-O Spirits is the sequel of Treasure Games' manic shooter on the N64 and Dreamcast. To those not familiar with the predecessor, you fly a small robot through a series of 2D spaces with the objective of destroying some targets. The targets sometimes include some boss enemies, or a few easy to kill grunts.
Through the course of a level hundreds, yes hundreds, of bullets, missiles, and lasers can be aimed at you from dozens of on-screen enemies. Your arsenal against all of this includes two basic attacks of your choice that can fire in one direction at a time, or the EX blasts of your liking, that can launch up to a hundred missiles from your tiny frame in one or all directions. The EX blast also has the ability to combine the power of all the enemy missiles in your proximity and reflect it onto them with a damage multiplier. When this happens, all of your missiles increase in damage and size proportionally to the number. If done right, your giant missiles can tear through your enemies, that is if they don't reflect them back on you. Easy to say at any given time there is lot happening on the little screen. It can be a bit overwhelming at times. However, there is a very charming tutorial that walks you through the basics.
Once you finish the tutorial levels, the credits roll. Yup, this is score-based no-frills gaming at it's best. The only “story” you encounter is through the little episodes between the beginner levels. The rest of the game is divided into over a hundred and sixty stages in three categories: Treasure's Best, Puzzle Stages, and Other Stages. Some of these are expansive environments that take a minute to touch corners, others are the size of the DS screen. If you manage to become bored of the preset stages, there is a very functional level-editor that allows you to create almost any area already on the cartridge.
The game itself is directed at a very hardcore audience. That said, the difficulty ramps up rather fast. If you don't time an EX blast properly you can die within a second or two of starting a level. There are also cases where if you don't choose the right weapon set, it's impossible to complete a stage. It would have been nice to see a button in the game over screen that sent you back to weapon selection since this happens fairly often. Yet, with most of these cases, all the levels feel pretty fair.
Even though the game was ported miraculously to the DS, it's not perfect. Slowdown happens very frequently. Most of the time it's a blessing giving you extra time to plan your next move, but either way, it's there. There is also a problem with the EX blasts if too many objects are on the screen. In this case if you get maximum output from your EX blast, the game comes to a screeching halt, every missile you fired is not displayed on screen (meaning some enemies that should die, don't always do), and I have found the controls to be unresponsive unlike during normal slowdown.
Unfortunately, there are a few features I couldn't test: the level swapping system that uses sound to transfer customs levels from one DS to another, and the four player co-op, which in practice sounds like an enjoyable experience, but I would definitely try it before buying the game for that reason.
Overall the title has been a great pick-up-and-play experience that I've enjoyed thoroughly in short bursts. I find myself coming back to it despite it's flaws. It's not a triple-a title, but if you enjoy a good twitch-based game, you may want to check this out.

Grade: B