Quick pick of the week, Hoard (and our review of it)

Hoard cover

Hoard is a top-down-view sandbox game available on Steam for about $10. The game consists of playing as a dragon, trying to destroy everything, and collecting all the loot that is dropped by the things destroyed.  Well that is how the game starts; Hoard offers several different viable strategies like slowing your competition, dominating towns so they pay you without any work, or just overall destruction. Hoard has no defined storyline; it’s basically a stress reliever. The game rounds in Hoard only last 10 minutes leaving me wishing there was a freeplay mode or a way to increase round length. In Hoard you control a dragon, they have four skills: speed, attack, inventory size (holding money), and armor. All of them are important and to be successful in the game you need to choose your skills quickly. A dragon that focuses only on speed will be weak and unable to carry much while a dragon that focuses entirely on inventory size will have problems killing things and getting there in a timely many. Skill points are gained by leveling up, the experience is earned when turning in princess’, gems, or money.

Hoard multiplayer!

Multiplayer has three modes: a lootfest mode (earn the most points/make the most money), a capture the princess mode, and a cooperative lootfest mode. The lootfest and cooperative lootfest modes consist of burning everything down and collecting loot. Other strategies like focusing on carts and towers are viable because a developed farm and a developed town will produce valuable carts. That is the strategy that works best for me but if you just want to destroy everything, it works, and its fun as hell. All the objects you can attack have different values to them, towers range from 750-3000 in worth, farms and villages from 500-1500, knights/archers can be worth anywhere from 75-500, but the real money makers come from the hard to get and hard to kill objects. Things like giants which can be worth 5000 or more, princess’ which range from 1000-3000, and lightning towers which ranger from 3000-5000. There are a ton of different things to kill which means the maps vary greatly, some have a lot of villages but few lightning towers or castles that produce knights. There are maps with a lot of lightning towers which means you can potentially get a very high score but at an increased risk. The game isn’t just about the looting, you need to survive as well and get the most points! If you capture a princess, all the knights on the map will try and hunt you down to get their princess back. Thieves spawn periodically trying to steal from your Hoard of loot. As time progresses (at a rate of once every 30 seconds or so) you will get your multiplier improve up to x3 at the most, this means you can level up more quickly but you have to protect yourself and your loot to keep the multiplier. This means that to do better you can’t just run over everything hoping to live or leave your base undefended for extended periods of time and this is where the multiplayer takes off. Team play is hugely valuable, picking skills to work off of each other is also important and it made the game much more enjoyable for me. 

While this game shines in multiplayer (my house was filled with yelling when playing this with friends, the pvp is great for producing this) the game does fall behind in the single player. To be honost, it just gets boring, the AI for the computer characters isn’t the best and there is no option to increase their difficult so it gets old fast. Without a campaign or story and having only a handful of modes (though it has some that multiplayer doesn’t) Hoard doesn’t really offer much in the form of single player.

Hoard single player

Overall Hoard is a very entertaining multiplayer game but at a price of 10 dollars, because it offers so little single player potential, I think the price is too much. However if you are patient this game will be on sale on Steam again, if I remember correctly I purchased it for $2.50 during a past sale in which case I would very much so recommend the game. If you have 10 minutes to burn before you need to go to work or catch a flight then Hoard is great, but don’t expect it to consume hours without playing with friends. The best part of this game is playing with people, pvp is exciting and it is great fun thinking of ways to hurt your opponent whether it be stealing what they kill, just killing them over and over, kiting knights to their Hoard, or yourself stealing from their Hoard. 

Hoard's Rating: 75/100

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Tetris goes free on the Android market!!!

Some might not call this article news worthy but I couldn’t disagree with them more. We here at 1UpNerd love classic video games, we love free games, and we love mobile gaming which is why we are happy to share with you that Tetris is now free on the Android market thanks entirely to EA. For awhile now EA has been trying to infiltrate the non pc/console gaming industry but with competition like Zynga and other large companies that control the market with their style of social games it has been a difficult road. I am guessing that EA is trying to bring attention to its mobile games by releasing everyone’s favorite classic mobile game for free to the world.

Tetris is a wonderful game, I’ve always known what it was but it wasn’t until sophomore year of high school did I really start playing, every day, 5 days a week (in study hall for about 50 minutes) against one of my closest friends on our crappy little phones. At the time it was just about as developed a game as you could put on a phone but even now when I play the game it is always great. It should be a game that comes preloaded on every phone but thanks to EA that isn’t necessary since they made it free.

You can also find the classic but updated version of Worms that if my memory serves me right I played last on Dreamcast, Fifa, and The Sims 3 by EA on your Android phone. EA doesn’t always do everything right (cough, their client attempts) but they definitely did right with me this time.

Link to the free version of Tetris: FREE TETRIS!!!!

Link to other games offered by EA on the Android market: EA Games

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First Look at Quantum Conundrum from the Co-Creator of Portal

Saturday evening at the Penny Arcade Expo, the world got its first view of Quantum Conundrum (a physics-based puzzle game developed by the co-creator of Portal Kim Swift). The game is set to be released on PSN, Xbox Live, and PC through Airtight Games and Square Enix early next year.

The game appears to follow a young boy's search for his missing inventor uncle. Through his journeys he must switch between 5 different dimensions: normal, "fluffy", slow-motion, anti-gravity, and one yet unknown to solve the puzzles presented by his uncle's manor. The game has a cartoon-like quality similar to Team Fortress 2 but is very much an adult game in its opportunity for challenge (there will be instances in which multiple dimensions must be used to solve a puzzle). Here's the first look at the game presented by Kim Swift:

If Kim Swift keeps to her track record of creating humorous stories with solid gameplay this one without a doubt will be a hit, we look forward to the game and what it has to offer. I am personally rooting for the fifth dimension to somehow liquify everything, I don't know how that would be useful but it certainly would look cool. 

P.S. Think about it, Kim Swift was the co-creator of Portal, there will probably be slow-motion and anti-gravity cake.

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Playstation Vita Release Date News

At E3 earlier this year both Nintendo and Sony announced their big plans for the year. Nintendo announced its WII U and Sony announced the Playstation Vita, their next generation portable gaming system. It was an impressive display to the least showing off the ability to play Uncharted 3 with beautiful graphics and taking full advantage of the first major dual analog portable gaming system. Sony also announced at the time that they would be selling two models, one with Wi-Fi and one with 3G internet provided through AT&T. This had a lot of consumers worried as they thought the price would be outrageous but much to everyone’s surprise the cheaper model of the Vita will be the same price as Nintendo’s new handheld, the 3DS at 250 dollars.

Since the announcement Nintendo has reduced the price of the 3DS in attempts to drive up sales and they have announced a version of the 3DS to come out early 2012 with dual analog sticks. Something the original didn’t have. Both of the announcements is clearly in response to Sony announcing the Vita but Sony never really announced when it would be released. The rumor mill has been working around the clock on the release date for the Vita. I’ve heard everything from it is being delayed to get 4G internet speeds to Sony is waiting to release it until the hype from the 3DS dies down, but fortunately for you and me both, it seems a series of leaks has occurred that may mean that we are getting the Vita sooner than expected.

Blockbuster UK has an ad in their stores that is saying the release date for the Vita is October 28^th, Shopto.net says the Vita will be available on their website November 4^th, and a letter sent to IGN said that Supremacy MMA, one of the games set for the launch of the Vita, will be released fall this year. So if everything goes well, come holiday time, we will have our hands on the overpowered and beautiful Playstation Vita. I’m traditionally a Nintendo handheld user but for this one, I think Sony will take the cake and eat it too. One last thing, the Blockbuster UK advertisement says the Vita will be 230/280 Euros and it has already been said that the Euros and dollar prices will equal which means for us in the U.S. it could possibly be a 230 dollar system which has me even more excited. 

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Mobile Thursday Review of Battle Fury

Do you have an Android phone? Do you desire that classic turn based Final Fantasy Tactics style game? Well Noumena Innovations has created a game that should help to fill that void in your nerd heart. Battle Fury is all about the tactics used from turn to turn, positioning your tanks up front and mages, healers, and rangers in the back while using your skills to the fullest of their potential.

Battle Fury offers questing with your squad of 2-8 (depending on the mission) and player versus player rounds. Starting off with a basic warrior like character, in this case, the Squire Kid, you quickly progress through missions until you unlock healers, mages, rogues, paladins, and better warriors. Characters can level up but because early on you will be replacing them with better characters so often it isn’t very useful. They have a max level of 5 with each level increasing their health and damage dealt.

Because it is a free game each character in your squad has an energy bar, a battle that you have won will consume 1 energy and a battle that you have lost will consume 2 energy, each character only has 5 and this is one of the ways they try to make money off the game. By purchasing gems you can restore the energy of the character but with a little patience it will restore itself over time (1 per hour).  As you level up you unlock more character slots so eventually you will have enough characters for 2 or more full squads depending on the mission so don’t think you will find yourself without things to do in the game because of energy issues very often. Leveling up a character also restores the characters energy but because the cap is 5 after that point you won’t get full restores.

The combat is pretty straight forward, positioning, skills, focus firing, they all play a major role. Unfortunately there is only one map so in that respect it can get a bit tiring seeing the same thing all the time. The game is still being updated from time to time so I hope to see different types of maps (elevation maybe?) eventually. One function they did put in the game which I found both enjoyable and frustrating is the ability to have your characters automatically fight without your commands meaning that you can just watch as the battle progresses. It is kind of cool to watch but there is either a major flaw or huge disadvantage to doing this. If you tell your squad to automatically fight without you the healers will still heal but mages, warriors, and rogues won’t use any special abilities. I’m not sure as to whether this was intentional or not but I found after about level 22 I wasn’t able to tell my squad to fight alone and be successful without me anymore, they would just lose over and over.

 

There is a player versus player mode in Battle Fury as well. Instead of fighting monsters, you fight other squads. I quickly found all healer squads dominate in this category when using the automatic function but without it any equivalent level squad can be effective with enough focusing. The ranking system seems crude at best, I never began to understand how the rankings would work and it is hard to find an opponent ranked high above you because of the way the menus are set up.

Because the developers of Battle Fury want to make some money they have added 1 advertisement at the top of screen, it is a little annoying but easily avoidable. They have also added a premium currency, the primary function of which is to restore energy to your characters and to purchase items to make your characters stronger. You can also find these items while questing but they seem very rare, I only found 2 in the first 24 levels of the game (which means about 100 missions). The ones I found don’t do very much and management of them is quite difficult but I’m guessing as you progress to the later levels of the game that they become more effective and necessary especially among the best pvpers.

Battle Fury is a free game. Therefore you get a free quality game, if you want some turn based action, this is probably the best free one on the Android market (I’ve heard of some premium ones but I haven’t tried them yet). There are a lot of different characters, quite a few different skills, and a wide array of enemies. The game lacks map choice and some of the functions could be smoother but it is still a good way to waste your time at work.

Battle Fury’s Rating: 71/100

2 last minute updates to the post, Battle Fury is available on the Iphone market (for a price I believe) and the real big news, Steve Jobs is no longer CEO of Apple. Yesterday he resigned from the position, he will however be taking the job of chairman of the board of directors for the company.

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