Day 2 - Space Empires IV, DEFCON, Section 8 and AudioSurf

Space Empires IV Deluxe

4X games can be amazing fun. I have very fond memories of playing Master of Orion (and slightly less fond memories of the two sequels). They also tend to be the turn-based strategy games that require the most micromanagement, and that can get tedious very quickly, and can be so complex that it's near impossible to get into it.
Space Empires IV is old enough that it only supports one resolution: 1024x768. If you play on anything higher you get letterboxing so bad you'll have to squint to read anything. I tried to find a patch or fix but in the end I opted for dropping my resolution down. The interface itself is not very intuitive, and there's so much data to be seen, but luckily the game itself isn't too complicated. I've played SE4 before, so I was able to skip the tutorial and hop right in.
As a passive player, I focused on research and colonization, making friends with the locals. Most of them were more than willing to engage in trade with me, save for one unfortunate event where one of my scouts got stuck in foreign territory and it got shot down. By the end of my 3 hours of playing I had 15 colonies in 4 systems and was in the process of building up a fleet, which I'm not ashamed to admit was not for self-defense purposes.

SE4 is definitely not a game for short sessions. Even with 3 hours of play, there were still plenty of expansion opportunities out there that didn't require going to war. Not to mention I barely scratched the surface of the research opportunities. Definitely a very enjoyable game, and the ship design element is just the level of customization I love to have in 4X games. I hope to come back to Emperor Viper and the Viper Empire (I'm great at making original names, aren't I?) before I forget where I stand and what my plans were. I'm also looking forward to seeing how Space Empires V compares, as I never tried it in the past.

DEFCON

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, but I didn't think it would be on day 2. I could only stand to play DEFCON for 27 minutes, while my goal was set at 41. I have no one but myself to blame though, as I didn't know what I was doing. I had played the tutorial in the past, and really didn't feel like sitting through it again, so I thought I'd hop on against and AI and wing it. Well, I lost. And I lost HARD.
For those of you who have not tried DEFCON before, it's basically a strategy game involving global thermonuclear war. You place the predetermined amount of radars, missile silos and air bases around your country, and deploy your fleet in the surrounding waters. Every item has it's purpose, radars detect enemies and shoot down air support, silos nuke enemy cities and defend against incoming nukes. The strategy comes into play in where you place your resources, and how you use them, and I definitely did not have the strategy.
DEFCON stays on the list, and maybe I'll come back to it later.

Section 8

I'm not really sure how I ended up with this game, as I knew nothing about it and what to expect. Section 8 feels like a title that was designed for multiplayer, with elements from Unreal Tournament, Tribes and Enemy Territory mixed in. The single-player campaign is listed in the main menu as the third option, further cementing my opinion that the title is MP first. There's next to no story, I played through the first 3 missions and learned little other than the fact that you're a soldier that drops down onto a planet via drop-ship and fights an enemy. I'm not even quite sure if they're supposed to be aliens or not, but I assume so.
Gameplay-wise it's your standard objectived based missions. Go to point A, secure the area, activate the console, etc. Then a checkpoint is reached and you move on to the next objective. I can see this working very well in a multiplayer environment, with the offense pushing in and the defense attempting to hold them back.

To help you in this you can customize your loadouts. In the campaign you unlock items relatively slowly, so by the 3rd mission I had tried 4 weapons and little else. You also get to select 10 passive slots, which do things like give you enhanced attack power, armor, shields, etc. It feels a lot like Tribes, but I don't know if the customization goes as deep.
Speaking of Tribes, there's also jetpacks and vehicles, although both are a lot more limited. Your jetpack can only fly for a few seconds, and then needs to recharge, so you don't really get the aerial battles. The vehicles seem to be ordered by spending money. I'm not sure how that mechanic works in MP, but in the campaign there's a few places where you're given money and told to call in turrets or a tank.
The game is decently paced, but it's obviously a multiplayer game. The large-scale maps and jetpacks make me shy away, as games with those features tend to have much higher learning curves. I played this game for 54 minutes, and I think that's probably enough.

AudioSurf

Rhythm games are definitely one of my favourite genres, but I'm not entirely sure AudioSurf falls into that category. It's definitely a music game, but you don't play music to a beat. Instead you pilot a ship flying down a track that rises, falls and curves to the beat of your music. Your goal is to pick up the colored blocks that are on the path and align them into connected groups of three.
Different characters have different abilities and mechanics. For example, the Mono is quite simple, grab the colored blocks and avoid the grey ones. The pusher, on the other hand, can push a block left or right depending on what mouse button you're holding when you grab it.
I had already played AudioSurf a bit in the past, and today's 50 minutes helped confirm that I'm not really a fan of this game. Yes, the fact that you can play with your own library is amazing, but the game itself just doesn't appeal to me, and feels only loosely connected to your music.

Notes

I had to skip two titles from the list today. I had assumed that Overlord: Raising Hell was a standalone title, as it appears in the Steam game list. It turns out, though, if you don't have Overlord installed the game simply does not launch. No error message or anything, either. I'll grab Overlord and come back to it later.
On a similar note, The Last Remnant was on the list, but I haven't downloaded it yet. I'm on a monthly limit of 120GB with my ISP, so 12GB downloads really take their toll. For now it remains unplayed.

7.6 hours played, 191 to go!

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 002