Technical Difficulties

Windows 7 crashed on me and after 12 hours of attempting to resurrect the partition i had to surrender and reinstall windows 7. (My backups were also lost!!!)

As such i have been unable to play Sanctum; as my system has just only become operational once again.

I shall continue my review tommorow, however

Sanctum - Day 3 - Towers

Today i would like to cover the tower types so far i have encountered in this game:

Gateling: High fire rate but low damage. Large range
Scatter laser: A medium damage laser. It changes target every 2 secounds, hence its name. Large range.
Lightning tower: High damage, but very slow and limited range. These towers are essential though against all of the bigger types of enemy.
Anti-Ait: Slow firing but heavy hitting against air targets.

All towers are upgradeable of course

I'd like to add ive run through the first map, mine, by only upgrading my towers. I barely survived the level. Next run ill try upgrading the weapons.

 

Chasing after your targets is essential

Tommorow i will cover the different enemy types.

Sanctum - Day 2

Today i thought i'd talk about my first impression of the game, which is smooth, reasonable graphics, no bugs or crashing (*cough* magicka *cough*).

There are 3 different tower types and three different guns your chrachter can have.

Sniper rifle: Pretty self explanitary. High damage but long reload
Assault gun: A machine gun, low damage tohugh but can sustain fire
Freeze gun: Can slow enemies or, using the alternate fire button. freeze anemies in an area for say 3 seconds. LOOOONG reload time though.

The controls are fairly simple, standard FPS controls. WSAD keys to move, space to jump, left click to buy towers and fire your weapons,

Here is a demo video made by the producers of the game.

 

Tommorow ill talk a bit more about the towers in the game,

Sanctum - Day 1 - Introduction

 So the game ill be playing this week: is:

I'd like to point out this game is based on the full Unreal engine. It started life as a mod for unreal.

A description of the game, courtesy of its developer:

"Sanctum is a first person shooter tower defense where you take the role as Skye, an elite soldier sent out to protect her home town, Elysion One, from hordes of mysterious alien creatures.

To succeed you have to construct and upgrade defensive structures.

What makes Sanctum unique from other tower defenses is that when the havoc starts, you jump right into the action with your own weapons and play a key role in the defense. Sanctum has taken the best features from first person shooters and tower defense games to create something totally unique."

First person shooter + Tower defense? Hopefully you can see why im skeptical. But i look forward to the coming days for it to prove me wrong.

BRING IT ON!

Magicka - Conclusion - Day 7

Well what can i say.

Its been an interesting 7 days with magicka, trying out the possible spell combinations but i feel id seen verything the game had to offer by day 4.

Concept: Well, i cant say ive seen a beat-em-up style game where you must quickly combine spells to kill enemies, and where said spells are the only keyboard controls you have, and can do so with up to 3 other people online. A

Implementation: Buggy as hell and an unoptimized engine. I understand you only have two programmers in your design team but my point still stands that you shoudnt release DLC until you have fixed your base game. The game is also plagued by graphical lag for no apparent reason. Although not the worst engine ive seen, it needed alot more work before its release. The UI is clean and easy, but its brought down hard by the engine and bugs.The fact that the charachters talk like the swedish chef from the muppets is fairly funny. D+

The bottom line:  A fun game, when its not crashing. Needs alot more bug-fixing and then it would be a indie gem. In its current state i woudnt pay more than $7 for it.

Magicka - Day 6

On this final day of Playing through magicka (I personally thought id seen all that is to be seen a few days ago),

I thought i'd like to talk about the DLC avaliable for this game:

 

Magicka VIETNAM is obviously a parody of DLC for Battlefield bad company 2.

Also, it dosn't offer much for the $5 the developers want for the game  All you get is a differet playable mage (instead of sword he carries an M60), you get a new last stand mode (really just a jungle map with retextured enemies) and a *SINGLE* new "mission" (maybe 10 minutes worth) where you fight retextured enemies in  a jungle setting, blowing up radio towers and the like

Now, i didnt pay the $5 for it as i bought the Magicka Bundle for $7 but IMO i certainley woudnt pay $5 for maybe 10 minutes worth of content.

Also, the game its based on is incredibly buggy. Maybe the developers should be concentrating on fixing the bugs in thier original game before releasing any DLC.

Obvious grab for cash, thats what it is.

Magicka - Day 5

I'd like to elaborate a little more on the controls for this game, and the spells

Those tiny coloured blobs in the bottom left of the screen are the only keyboard controls for the game.

They are all the spells for the game. the keys used are QWER ASDF, ( for quick typing i would imagine)

Q - Water - Sprays ahead of you

W - Healing - Is a healing beam (or can cast on self for heal)

E - Shield - Can create a shield around you, or use on self for a personal shield

R - Ice - Sprays ice infront of you. Freezes enemies

A - lightning - Is like a lightning bolt. It can arc between foes

S - Arcane (opposite of life) - Is a beam weapon, but unlike heal ray its a DEATH ray

D - Earth - Is a projectile (boulder)

F - Fire - like water, but fire. sets enemies on fire

You can combine these spells for awesome results.

For example, DDFF would make a flaming boulder projectile. SSRR would make an ice beam, AARR makes lightning that arcs between foes and freezes them.

The possibilites are mind boggling. But again combining spells is your only method of attacking! So you must be quick as the game otherwise plays as a screen by screen beat em up.!