Category: Reviews

07/25/14

GrogHeads Reviews Paper Sorceror

Review by Avery Abernethy,  25 July 2014

                Paper Sorcerer is a turn-based, small party, role-playing game.  Released by Runaway Games after a successful Kickstarter proposal, Paper Sorcerer harkens back to the early days of RPGs such as the early Wizardry, Ultima, and Gold Box D&D dungeons like Pool of Radiance or Eye of the Beholder.  This review is based on my completion of the game after approximately eighteen hours of play on a newish Falcon Northwest personal computer.  My copy of Paper Sorcerer was purchased from www.gog.com on sale for $3.99.  The download was fast and the installation was smooth.

Paper Sorcerer has one of the most creative background stories that I have encountered.  Your main character is an evil sorcerer who has been banished into a book by a party of four good characters.  The book is your prison.  It is also the prison of a host of other evil types.  But a limited number of “good” heroes have also entered the book to keep all of the bad guys from magically breaking the bindings of the book and earning freedom in an unsuspecting world.  The background story is largely told in a short animated sequence at the start of the game and reinforced with minimal background information learned as you explore the dungeon.

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07/20/14

GrogHeads Reviews Valiant Hearts: The Great War

A review by Lloyd Sabin, 20 July 2014

Published by Ubisoft Montpellier

As always, click images to enlarge

Emotions and War

I don’t typically wear my emotions on my sleeve. In the last 20 years I think I have shed tears three times in front of my own wife. But there are certain events and historical phenomenon that bring out the sensitive, skinny-jean-and-mesh-truck-cap wearing emo in me…and World War I is at that top of the list.

Why, specifically? I don’t know. Maybe I view World War I through too romantic a lens and I believe so much of what has been written about it: “lions led by donkeys,” the “death of innocence” and “good bye to all that.” Those terms and the emotions, places, and situations they describe really resonate with me in a way that no other historical era does.

Zeppelins are portrayed in Valiant Hearts and you'll have to learn how to take them down!
Zeppelins are portrayed in Valiant Hearts and you’ll have to learn how to take them down!

It’s strange because I had direct contact with World War II through my grandparents: its horrors and its triumphs – so much so that World War II became almost commonplace to me. Where and when I grew up, everyone had a father, or more likely a grandfather, who fought in it. World War I is murkier; I have never knowingly met anyone who was there, so I have constructed what it was like for combatants on all sides in my own head. And this has produced a war where vengeance and justice have been replaced with melancholy and the longing for “the way things were before.” By World War II the world collectively knew that there was no going back; during World War I this loss was still very new and very fresh. This hazy, general feeling of loss and grief is captured masterfully by Valiant Hearts: The Great War (VH:TGW).

Paris at night, before the Battle of the Marne.
Paris at night, before the Battle of the Marne.

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07/16/14

Classic Reviews: Dust

Great chips-and-soda game that is familiar in gameplay, but with just enough added complexity to keep players engaged throughout the game. Combat is nuanced but still fast-flowing, and players have to make serious strategic choices at every turn.

Review by Brant Guillory, about 7 years ago 🙂

This review originally appeared in Scrye Magazine

Number of players: 2-6
Designed for ages: 12 and up
Learning Curve: Low to Medium
Playing time: 1-3 hours
Pros: Visually grand; familiar mechanics; lots of choices for players
Cons: Backstory irrelevant to gameplay; some game effects not clearly explained

Dust, Fantasy Flight’s new “big box” game, is based on the comics of the same name, in which history was altered by the discovery of alien technology on a polar expedition early in WWII. You now know more than you need to know about the backstory of the game in order to play it. But don’t let that get you down, because Dust is a great game, regardless of the story behind it.

Players are trying to gain victory points by controlling power sources, conquering their opponents, and dominating certain numbers on the map. They do so by marshalling their armies, and balancing the manufacture of forces with the usage of them. Continue reading →

07/13/14

GrogHeads Reviews World at War: Blood & Bridges

World at War: Blood and Bridges, Published by Lock ‘n Load Publishing

Review by Michael Eckenfels, 13 July 2014

 

INTRODUCTION

The fascination with the hypothetical balloon going up in Europe in the 80s doesn’t cease to amaze me. I think this is mainly because I am a child of the 80s and during that time, as I was getting into wargaming, a conventional NATO vs. Warsaw Pact ground war was a very real possibility. Gaming it out to bloody completion was compelling and riveting for me. And now, about a quarter century after the Berlin Wall fell and communism (more or less) has left Europe and Russia, it’s still something of a hot gaming topic. Whether you play it out on your PC or on your dining room table, there’s commie tanks looking to grind outnumbered Westerners under their treads, somewhere. photo 2 Blood and Bridges is a Lock ‘n Load game that captures a slice of the West vs. East “war” in the 1980s. It is not a grand strategic game, but rather a tactical one, that focuses on platoon-level combat. If you’re looking to decide the fate of the entirety of Western Europe, you’re going to be disappointed. However, this game delivers, in a way, something better: a focal point battle (or series of battles) fought over the Rhine River Valley in the western part of West Germany. The premise is: the Soviets have taken something of a beating from NATO ground forces, but have doggedly ground their way forward, and are making a final, massive thrust towards this all-important geographic feature. In their way is the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), making a steadfast final stand of sorts – a very British thing to do! Continue reading →

07/11/14

GrogHeads Reviews Piercing Fortress Europa

A Flash Review by Boggit

Developed by Adanac Command Studios and Published by Matrix/Slitherine

Click images to enlarge

When I saw this operational level game I was very motivated to look at it, as it claimed to emphasise logistics as a key element. I like this dimension, since in reality operations are usually dictated by the ability to supply. Many operational games deal with this only at a very simple level to avoid bogging the game down, so it is interesting to see whether Piercing Fortress Europa gets the balance right between reality and playability. I looked at the game under release version v1.2. The update improves things over the initial release, and adds sound which the release version lacked. In terms of scale each hex represents roughly 12 km across, each turn four days in the summer, up to six days in the winter, and three days for the Sicily Campaign. Units are divisions, brigades, or commando units.

The game menu gives a choice of 6 campaigns, handicap settings, game type (for example single player for either side, hot-seat, or play by electronic mail (PBEM)), and screen resolution. The game screen is windowed, and doesn’t support a full screen mode, which is a bit odd for a game released these days but is not a big deal. I have Guns of August from the same developer, which has been out for a while now, and that game displays similarly, so I’m not expecting any further screen mode changes from the developer.

The menu screen is functional
The menu screen is functional

The PBEM option is pretty basic, and it is a pity it doesn’t take advantage of Matrix/Slitherine’s multiplayer lobby, which is user friendly and a good source for finding opponents. Instead it’s a question of entering a password, saving the game, and sending it by email as an attachment, or by a memory stick. To be honest I wasn’t very impressed, especially since most recent Matrix/Slitherine releases use the excellent Matrix/Slitherine multiplayer lobby. I’m hoping this feature will change in a future update.

Pre-landing planning in Sicily. I have a free choice as to where to land, but pre-invasion recon has been a disaster!
Pre-landing planning in Sicily. I have a free choice as to where to land, but pre-invasion recon has been a disaster!

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