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Banner of the Maid

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The main protagonist is Pauline Bonaparte the sister of Napoleon and a brand new graduate of the military academy, that gets involved with different factions trying to take over France.


There is conspiracy going on in France with Austrians, Prussians and English crowns involved.

Better get some skilled spies to help us.


They think a road block will stop us.


Silly girl being silly, but dont challenge her to a shooting contest.


Helping big brother with love problems. Unfortunately he is a tactician and not very understanding.



The first act is the hardest, after that you get a way to level up your units in repeatable missions and the main story missions get easier.
Each unit can be upgraded only once, there is a level cap, a lot of missions have very short timers to finish them; but finishing challenges gets you more units, special items and unlocks more items in shops.
I would put this game under simple tactical games but with a bit of save/load/patience tactics needed to finish it.

 

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Aeon Flux (emulated on pcsx2)

Picture it: You're a lowly enforcer for the oppressive city-state of the Republic of Breen, just doing your rounds in one of Chancellor Goodchild's top-secret facilities. Out of nowhere, Charlize Theron bursts in wearing a skin-tight black catsuit - the very same outfit in which she has been performing hours of strenuous acrobatics and brutal hand-to-hand combat. She taunts you, punches you in the face, then wraps her legs around your head and starts squeezing. Your vision goes dark, and you sense only the crushing pressure and feminine scent of her enveloping Amazonian thighs. Then, there is a snap, and you are at peace.

This is the dystopian reality of Aeon Flux, Terminal Reality's sci-fi action-adventure released for PS2 and Xbox as a tie-in for the poorly received movie. Developed in less than a year using the Bloodrayne 2 engine as a base, it's an unimpressive but competent title stuffed with shallow gameplay contrivances to decorate its formulaic core. The protagonist is some sort of resistance agent - Aeon - assisting the state of Monica against the technocratic rival nation of Breen, for whom she used to work...or will work for? We'll come back to that. Unusually for movie tie-ins, the heroine is actually voiced by the original star, so if you're a fan of Charlize Theron (apparently roleplaying an ardent stoic), you'll get to hear her voice a fair bit as you beat up guards and leap about in secret bases, futuristic cities and pockmarked warzones. This basic gameplay loop is consistent throughout the game - fight through a group of guards using melee and guns, jump across a bunch of platforms, do some sort of gimmick task and then repeat.

Combat is standard for brawlers of the era, with basic punches and kicks to whittle down a foe's health and pull off a finishing move, plus heavy attacks to break through protective gear like shields or armour. Finishing moves can be used to restore health, build energy for special attacks, throw enemies into obstacles or most amusingly, turn victims into living bombs. Oddly, lock-on for melee seems to have been cut since Bloodrayne 2, which can be frustrating due to how often you will whiff attacks and leave yourself open. Another annoyance is how long finishers take, usually letting other opponents take a swing right as the animation (and your iframes) ends. It's also quite easy to get knocked down and then struck again right as you try to recover. The only time automatic targeting does come into play is when using guns, but you have limited control over them and often end up killing the same foe you were trying to weaken for a health finisher when you wanted to target a new enemy.

Platforming is also a bit different to Bloodrayne 2, as whilst it shares a number of basic features like hopping between poles and running along walls, it also introduces a few new moves, such as rebounding off surfaces to knock down targets or pulling unfortunates from ledges. Acrobatics are also much more contextual in Aeon Flux, from special highlighted grappling spots to consistently flipping the camera around and giving a prompt for the action it wants you to perform next. Whilst this carebear approach definitely makes platforming less frustrating than it was in its parent title, it also makes fighting around walls a little irritating and blocks any chance of getting a good platforming flow going, as well as making environments seem smaller and more restrictive than they actually are.

Terminal Reality tried to break up this loop of fighting and jumping with a couple of curious features in the form of hacking and "rollers". These "rollers" are giant balls the player can enter to get past forcefields, occasionally smashing them into guards using a boost power. Hacking involves placing a tiny, remote controlled roller with a short lifespan and navigating it to a socket before it's destroyed. Both activities typically challenge the player to wrestle with the game's physics system and avoid sending the balls (and themselves) plummeting to their doom. They're not the most infuriating sequences I've ever encountered, but they certainly inspired a bit of colourful language here and there. Beyond these, there's the usual turret sections and hunting for extra health, ammunition and bonus materials.

The bonus materials you can find scattered about range from art and extra costumes to lore-related cutscenes and memos. I tried to read as much of these as I could since the story can be rather confusing. Aeon starts off as a resistance agent, but different episodes seem to leap back and forth between points in the timeline in which characters are resurrected or change sides without explanation, or refer to events that seem mutually exclusive to things the player has already experienced. Aeon herself, for example, is everything from a runway model to an assassin-turned-celebrity-turned-assassin, a terrorist, a dutiful wife to the antagonist, a totally different character, a triple-agent, and so forth. At certain points it seems a cutscene or memo will help unify these disparate elements, but then instead introduce a new twist. As I understand it, the game is apparently an attempt to merge both the original MTV animation with the more traditional narrative of the movie - crossing deliberately transgressive, nonlinear storytelling and unconventional characters with generic sci-fi adventure beats and ending up with an absolute mess. I only vaguely remember the events of the movie and haven't yet seen the cartoon, so I don't know if those who've seen both would appreciate this more. As it stands the game's story felt unsatisfying and incomplete, even more so than Dontnod's Remember Me, another C-list action adventure which used a vaguely similar twist.

Whilst I liked some of the quirks of the Aeon Flux universe as depicted in the game - such as the (I presume to be) valleyspeak/Breen-cant spouting Hostesses (voiced by Laura Bailey amongst others) - the most interesting questions raised by the story (memory, perception, historical revisionism, selfhood) could easily be handled by any number of sci-fi settings. Seeing as I can't really judge the game on its merits as an Aeon Flux tie-in, I'll just say that it's a very average example of a very unremarkable genre from an era in which hundreds of such titles were released. Feel free to skip it unless you're nutty about the source material, and even then I suspect this isn't best vehicle for it.

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"Aeon starts off as a resistance agent, but different episodes seem to leap back and forth between points in the timeline in which characters are resurrected or change sides without explanation, or refer to events that seem mutually exclusive to things the player has already experienced. Aeon herself, for example, is everything from a runway model to an assassin-turned-celebrity-turned-assassin, a terrorist, a dutiful wife to the antagonist, a totally different character, a triple-agent, and so forth. "

that sounds like how it worked in the original cartoon

 

I'll give the cartoon the benefit of the doubt and assume it does something interesting with the characters' motivations and how you empathize with them etc. It's just jarring in the game.

 

While defending the borders of Rome I had the time to make this Acropolis type neighborhood. Most people when playing this map place their forts up on that hill, but I think this is much better. The patricians can now literally look down on the plebs. I'm quite pleased that I have two stable luxury palaces, the highest you can go on this map.

 

This thing looks like chimera from FMA. I hope there is no very tragic story incoming...

 

My first Battlestar ship 'Djinn' was sent to reinforce the system most in need, and was ambushed en route. (The game is Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock for those wondering)

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There was nothing clean about this one. My fleet had no edge in munitions or support units. Serves me right for providing a dirt basic escort.



Like a mighty war elephant, the Djinn barely felt a thing.

 

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SKRR SKRR SKRR SKRR SKRR

 

How good or bad is the game?

 

Age of Wonders

It's sad to say farewell to an old friend who has been my champion since the second mission of the campaign.


That little Troll and I have been through a lot together.

 

life is pain

 

OOOF

 

It's quite gimmicky, but I love the setting and aesthetic. From the tutorial trial, as to get an idea on how you develop your questions for the accused (and witnesses later on):




How it plays out is basically that you must identify as many valid questions as possible and then try being as thorough as possible with your investigation. That on the other hand you have to balance with the issue of the factions and of the court - different factions want different verdicts reached (execution/prison/acquittal) and (some) questions influence the verdict which the court supports. Annoy a faction enough with your verdicts and you might even get killed, but also keep in mind that asking too few questions and/or going against the court's opinion will hurt your reputation as a judge.

You also have combat later on, though it isn't anything remarkable:


And besides the court, you also have your free time each day which you (usually) spend either with your family or preparing for tomorrow's trial while neglecting them. And depending on the activities chosen, some family members will like you more and some less. And a few of the family members are also tied to certain factions.

Worth it for 10 euros (50% discount) as far as I'm concerned.

 

Off to a good start in the Facing a Legend map of the Cult of Storms campaign in Age of Wonders.


Not much sign of the other factions, though. I will pop my head up and get my bearings.


Uh oh! Not only a friggin' welcoming committee, but an allied welcoming comittee.


This map is gonna be hard.
The enemy rules the waves, I have no 4 tier cities, very little mana, and I suspect the enemy leaders (at least the Dwarf) are too tough to assassinate.

 

Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered (minor spoilers)

After almost two decades of failed attempts to kickstart Ghostbusters III, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis finally saw the next best thing come to fruition in the form of 2009's Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Mostly written and storyboarded by Aykroyd and Ramis themselves and based loosely off the abandoned script for "Ghostbusters III: Hellbent", the game was the last notable title released by the struggling Terminal Reality. The player jumps into the shoes of an unnamed trainee who joins much of the principle cast of the classic movies in a light-hearted action-adventure across, beneath and beyond Manhattan to save the city from cross-dimensional catastrophe.

Great pains have been taken to bring the weapons and equipment from the movies to life, so naturally the highlight of the experience is hunting down paranormal perfidy with your PKE meter, then blasting ghosts with proton streams and wrangling them into ghost traps, or hosing down possessed civilians with positively-charged slime. Of course, allowances were made for the videogame format, so there are hundreds of throwaway monsters like animated bookshelves or elemental spirits to mow down, and a variety of experimental proton streams that effectively act as freeze rays or homing missiles. There's also some inventive mixing of the Infernal engine with Ghostbusters lore, such as the use of sentient goo as a tether to pull at environmental obstacles or strap objects together.

Terminal Reality stated that their motto for Ghostbusters was that "the game should always be either fun, funny, or scary", though it doesn't really live up to that. The general combat experience is adequate enough for a third-person shooter, though AI companions can be frustratingly dense and trying to dodge some of the most pernicious flying foes as their friends shoot you in the back isn't an easy task. There's very little motivation to use the PKE beyond deviating slightly from the very linear path you're forced onto and go looking for hidden objects for upgrades to your weapons. Otherwise, you're only pulling it out because the game demands you do so. Movement can feel leaden due to the proton packs, and the player is only able to make use of the unwieldly sprint function for about five seconds. As for "scary", the game does its best impression of the movies with some moody environments and occasionally stranding the player in hostile waters, but this is nothing compared to Gozer's hounds in Ghostbusters or the scenes of the river of slime beneath New York in Ghostbusters II. The tone is mostly action or humour, lacking that critical counterweight of horror and tension.

It's a shame because the script itself is strong, and Aykroyd & Ramis' influence is very clearly evident. Listening to the characters talk, you can really believe that this dialogue was ripped straight out of an aborted Ghostbusters sequel. Unfortunately, the stars' excellent delivery doesn't always work so well with the limited expressions of their 3d models and the cartoonish, exaggerated animations they're saddled with. Bill Murray and William Atherton's contentious scenes as Dr. Venkman and Walter Peck would've been picture-perfect in a live-action movie, but not in the form of pre-rendered cutscenes of glassy-eyed avatars jerking about like broken marionettes. An aging Murray making advances on younger women also felt off. There's a similar feeling of something being not quite right with other elements of the Ghostbusters universe, like how the music of the movies sounds poorly sampled and used inappropriately in far too many scenes. Initially, the game felt like a very poor imitation of its source material, regurgitating situations from the first movie in videogame form, but it eventually picks itself up and tries to stand as both an independent experience and a respectful tribute. Still, the conceit of the silent "rookie" as player character never really sits right. They have a schleppy, ordinary joe look to them and make a cursory effort to emote in cutscenes, but beyond this have no personality whatsoever. Terminal Reality stated they wanted to give the audience of the movies the chance to feel like they were part of the action, but in that case I'm not sure why they didn't simply let players choose their own avatar.

Technologically, for a 2009 game Ghostbusters fails to make the impression Nocturne did a decade earlier. Some of the lighting looks alright, and there are one or two levels that make very artistic use of shadow, but a lot of fine detail is obscured by postprocessing and HDR effects. It looks very much as you'd expect for a typical mid-budget game of the era - that is to say, not fantastic. Much of the effort seems to have gone into the physics engine, which can handle an impressive amount of objects bouncing around, slamming into walls or shattering to pieces...then getting stuck under the player's feet and blocking progress until smashed again, or slowing them down during combat. Controls aren't the worst, though the proton wrangler doesn't always pull in the direction you want it to, which can be irritating when struggling with the physics puzzles. I've read that an enormous amount of work went into developing crowd AI that ended up excised from the game entirely - the perils of game development, I guess. On a final note, I found that the game kept wiping my graphics settings every time I booted it.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game isn't much to write home about, then. But it was the last time the team had the opportunity to ride out alongside Harold Ramis before his death in 2014, and likely the last time the original Ghostbusters work together without acting as a cynical ploy to "pass the torch" to a younger generation for the sake of Sony's profit margins. So, if you loved the movies, this is a fair way to say goodbye. Do be aware that the original game was removed from Steam and the Remastered version is only available on the Epic Games Store, so purchasing the title means funding Red China. Comrade Xi already taxes 20% of my income, so it was a moot point for me.

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Speaking of goodbyes, that's the end of my Terminal Reality run. The studio wobbled along doing shovelware and console ports before expiring in 2013, whilst Red Fly Studios had their own ambitious plans but guttered out around 2016. I hope my little writeups have inspired at least one or two people to give one of their titles a try. If not - well, I enjoyed writing them anyway.