Turn-Based Strategy

Remember a few years ago when there was a spate of animated movies featuring bugs? There's a reason for that, actually; it's fairly easy to animate chitonous creatures in 3D, since the body sections are rigid. And it's also fairly easy even for an indie developer to use 3D, if what they're animating are bugs. Which no doubt was one of the reasons Wahoo/NinjaBee chose insects for the heroes of this title. The choice is a fortuitous one, though, since it lends itself to the developers' light humorous touch -- which was very evident in their earlier (and excellent) tycoon game, Outpost Kaloki.

A long time ago, a great war was fought between a few units composed of three to five individuals. Some of these individuals were dragons, liches, vampires, Dragoons, and level 23 Paladins. If the rebel soldiers fought enemies weaker than them, they became evil, EEEVIL, and people would balk at them efficiently liberating towns. Apparently even level 18 Seraphim will buckle under the horrors of warfare, turning into the pixel art equivilant of Coronel Kurtz. So the leader of the rebellion came up with a genuis political tactic; he'd avoid all combat and just ride a fucking griffin around after the real soldiers constrain the flow of enemies, who apparently all march in a straight line to your base. By the way, this game is a classic.

Largely a remake of the much-loved Amiga game Defender of the Crown (later released for just about every platform available in the late 80s, including the NES), Heroes Live Forever updates the game with better graphics, fully digitized music, and a new gameplay element ("tactics" cards that give you special benefits during battles).

In Defender of the Crown, you play one of several great lords in England, attempting to unify the realm under your own rule. Conquering provinces produces tax revenues that you can use to increase the size of your army (but you have only one "army" which follows you, milord, about, and can purchase new units only at your castle, meaning you become vulnerable over time unless you return home frequently). Battles are fought out on screen; and joust and archery minigames can increase your "fame" (which allows you to earn more taxes and move farther distances). Conquering enemy castles requires (expensive) catapults.

Starting Urban Legend is a bit like firing up an old friend, at least for those of us who doted on turn-based strategy games like Jagged Alliance. I'm back in the old paradigm, taking advantage of cover, waiting testily while the enemy moves, and wincing when one of my expensive mercs dies. Can't think of a better way to kill an evening, really; UL certainly hits the right notes, and it's nice, too, that the story is somewhat humorous in nature (if appropriately bloodthirsty).

Defense is boring, right? Attacking is action, advance, and victory; defense is static. You sit there and hope for the best. No war was more boring than World War One--unmoving defensive trench lines for four long years. So a priori, you might think a game named "Master of Defense" would be, ah, less than scintillating.

Actually, it's quite cool.

From Slovakian developer Lonely Troops comes a well-conceived turn-based wargame with something of the feel of the Panzer General series, but set on a Dune-like desert planet in the throes of an emerging war. It features a nicely intuitive interface (and a good tutorial to teach you to use it), well conceived missions, and good quality music. Fans of games like Massive Assault will find a lot to like here--and gamers who like thoughtful strategy rather than the frenetic action of the RTS will enjoy it, too.

Fans of XCOM will find the gameplay of Taskforce familiar: you control a squad of heavily armed soldiers, and each turn you plan their moves. Each has a limited number of action points to spend, and movement, firing, and other actions require you to spend points. Opponents can 'opportunity fire' at you if you enter their field of fire (and they have action points remaining from last turn), so even though this is an "I move/you move" game, there's a sense of interactivity between the players as you move. Once you're finished with your turn, the other side performs its own actions under the control of the AI.

Massive Assault Better Than MissionForce: Cyberstorm

Massive Assault offers a series of 31 scenarios, five (5) campaigns (three for the Free Nations Union and two for the Phantom League) composed of four or more "steps" (scenarios) for each campaign, and a World War mode where blitzkrieg is the name of the game and the secret allies dynamic (one of the twists which will be explained later) can often make or break you. Players take the role of either imperial commander or leader of the democratic consortium. The variety is amazing.

Since it was founded, Slitherine has been producing a series of excellent wargames with both a strategic component that covers an entire war on a province level, and a tactical component that involves battles of large numbers of soldiers in a 3D representation. Legion has been one of their most successful titles, perhaps because it covers a huge period of Roman history, with 20 something scenarios and 3 complete campaign games, along with extensive diplomatic rules to cover relationships with other powers that can affect the outcome of a war.

...Because XCom is a trademark owned by Atari. But Laser Squad Nemesis is the true intellectual and gameplay heir of XCOM: UFO Defense (published in Europe as UFO: Enemy Unknown), the best-selling and best-loved computer game of 1995. No surprise there; Julian and Nick Gollop developed both games. But as is typical in this industry, they signed away all IP to get XCOM published.

If there were any justice in the world, they'd be spoken of in the same breath as Sid Meier and Will Wright--but in the late 90s, they found themselves with no publisher contract and no real hope of one, cast onto the slagheap by an industry that prizes brands above all and places no value on talent. And someone else owned the brand.