Small World is an ingenious bit of design work for how it takes very simple rules and then breaks them in very simple ways. Every time you play, you create random pairings of races and traits, each of which alters the basic rules. You pick a faction from this lottery of randomly paired elements, and you play that faction until they’ve expanded as far as they can get. Then you pack it in for a new faction, leaving the old faction to linger for a while, earning you a few victory points until the remnants are picked off by younger thriving Johnnies-come-lately. It’s like world history. Greece, then Rome, then England, then America. But here it’s halflings, then giants, then sorcerers, then kobolds. I didn’t mean to equate America with kobolds. It just came out that way.
The beauty of Small World is how these combinations can surprise you. In a recent game against my iPad — games against humans are more gratifying, but not always an option at 11pm when you just want a quick fix — I happened across the priestesses, a modest race that gets to stack all its units into one region when it goes into decline. This is the priestesses’ ivory tower. The ivory tower is a convenient single target for marauding races who want to knock them out of the game completely, but until then it earns a hearty stack of victory points every turn. So you usually put the tower in the mountains, to help defend it. I mean, where else would you find any self-respecting ivory tower? In farmlands? On a plain?
In my game, the priestesses were paired with a trait called sea-faring. This means they’re the only faction who can occupy oceans. So as soon as they spread as far as they can go, as soon as I opt to pack it in to play a new race, it occurs to me that an ivory tower in the ocean can never be attacked. There is only ever one sea-faring race in a game, and since there’s no other way to attack or occupy an ocean territory, my ivory tower is basically impregnable. Overpowered? Perhaps. But the thing about balancing a game like this is that the other player could have just as easily gotten the sea-faring priestesses.
So my priestesses camped the ocean, recalling their glory days, raking in an extra six victory points per turn. My iPad’s rampaging wizards, then goblins, then amazons couldn’t do a thing about it. That was one of the few games I actually won.
Dariusburst: SP is about as rote a shmup as you could ever hope to play. SP stands for Second Prologue, so I guess Dariusburst proper won’t start until a later game. Taito, whose Space Invaders shmups are downright inspired, has carefully leached this prologue to Dariusburst of anything resembling enthusiasm, energy, variation, personality, or unique gameplay, much less innovation. They just sort of plop this one down without much more than overly colorful graphics. You could say Dariusburst looks suitably HD, which is a pretty decent acccomplishment for a universal app (contrast this with Cave’s universal shooters, with the pixellated oversampled look of a game punching above its weight class). At least Dariusburst controls well, which is worth noting given that Space Invaders Infinity Gene has a weird and sometimes fatal jankiness in comparison.
Beyond that, there’s not much to say beyond listing features. A typical game of Dariusburst progresses through a branching series of missions, each ending in a boss. The theme seems to be mostly gray robot shellfish with dashes of primary colors. The replayability, such as it is, comes from whether you go from level C to level D or from level C to level E. After that, will you choose F, G, or H? It’s a bit like plunging through a parking deck with no idea where you parked your car. Just pick a level and go with it. The only real claim to variation is that each of the four ships has different stats, but mostly different superweapons. Fill burst gauge. Empty for massive damage. Repeat. Some of the superweapons are more hands-on that your usual “press bomb button to clear screen”, but it takes a lot of rote shmupping to get much mileage from these.
With its forgettable competence, Dariusburst very nearly turned me off of the entire genre of iPad shmups. That would have been a real shame, since the iPad is ideally suited for shmups, even if they’re not normally your thing. The controls, graphics, and time commitment — anywhere from three minutes to an hour — are perfect for the iPad. If you’re used to controlling a shmup with a joystick, or even a mouse, you’re in for a real treat when you discover how gratifying it is to meticulously finger your way through a bullet pattern. What’s more, you can find some remarkable creativity in iPad shmups. I’ve spent the last two weeks very nearly rubbing the fingerprints off my right index finger, and not because Dariusburst: Second Prologue is any good. Instead, I’ve found some absolute treasures that I’ll be reviewing all week.
So, enough with the prologues. We’ll get to the real shmups starting tomorrow.
2 stars
iOS
Political Machine 2012, the latest iteration of Stardock’s Presidential-campaign-as-strategy-game series, assigns numbers from one to ten for each of its candidates stats. I suppose I can live with the game giving Sarah Palin a five for intelligence. At least it’s higher than Michelle Bachman’s intelligence, which is four. That’s nothing if not charitable. I can maybe even live with giving Palin a four in fund-raising. But measly nines for charisma and appearance? That’s just hateful.
If you’re enough of a fighting game fan to know BlazBlue, you might consider this week an elevated wallet threat for the release of Persona 4 Arena. I can’t imagine the average Persona fan caring much about characters from the JRPG series appearing in a new fighting game. But I can imagine BlazBlue followers wanting to see what developer Arc System is doing next.
Scribblenaut developer 5th Cell’s next game might normally be a cause for an elevated wallet threat. But Hybrid looks like as bog standard a shooter as they come. Multiplayer, online, cover, space marines, zzzzz…
The excellent Payday: The Heist gets a $10 download called the Wolfpack. It adds two new heists, a new skill track, a sentry gun, and a grenade launcher. If ever a game needed a grenade launcher, it’s Payday, what with how all those cops love to clump up.
It’s a two-to-one split for the Total Recall remake on this week’s podcast. On a related note, the two-to-one split is inverted on the original Total Recall. Hmm. If you want to avoid spoilers, fast forward to the 53-minute mark for this week’s 3×3 of our picks for greatest squanderings of assembled talent.
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