First Strike: Nuclear Dawn - Blindflug Studios - iOS (2014)

If you’ve ever sat on the bus, mucking about on your phone on your way to work and thought “I’d just like to blow the world up with nuclear warheads” this is the game for you! In all serious though, Blindflug Studios have created a pretty solid nuke-em-up.

First Strike: Nuclear Dawn is a bite-sized portion of the apocalypse. You take control of a nuclear superpower and are given the keys to the “Big Red Button”. Being developed for tablets and phones alike it seems to sit nicely in a market without too many real-time strategy games and uses the touch nature of input to its full advantage.

You can expand into another region with two finger taps. Build a nuke with two finger taps and launch an all-out attack against a rival nation with two finger taps. In fact, there’s not much you can’t do that will take more than two taps. You can pinch and rotate the world, set up your defences and quickly scout to see which regions your neighbouring rivals are invading. The developers have taken full advantage of their simple control method by making this a pretty fast paced title. Stall too long building your defences and expanding into other regions and you’ll quickly be feeling the wrath of your impatient neighbours. Expanding and building your resources is a very easily accomplishable task.

The UI is incredibly well suited to the title, one click on a territory will open a radial menu of up to 8 options and you always know how well equipped that specific region through a small overlay on each region. At all times, you know how well structured you are and you are also aware of how many nuclear warheads your rivals are. The feedback it provides when a nuke lands is satisfying, your screen will shake and that familiar image of a mushroom cloud will expand from the Earth. Couple that with the titles “First Strike” attack: which will launch a nuke, within range, from each of your regions at a designated area. You’ll be treated with a few seconds of admiring your handiwork before the warheads come crashing down on their poor victim. You can also improve your already devastating force with a solid research tree which allows for automatic launches of interception nukes, reduced build speeds and visible nuclear warhead trajectories. All very nice additions to the late game when things can get a little hectic.

It allows for some quick thinking strategic plays, for example, if you play as Europe, you’ll want to create some defensive nuclear warheads facing Russia and Korea, but might want to expand into Africa to launch attacks of your own, or you can take your chances and surprise the Americans. The game will continually keep you on your toes, if you think you’ve got enough fire power to take out a nation to your East you’ll probably soon find that you’re being bombarded from West, North and South. The AI doesn’t cheat, but the overlay will show you how well equipped your neighbours are, and the AI obviously knows how well you are doing. It’s a smooth balance between keeping pressure on your rivals to stop them moving into key locations and ensuring you have enough focus to stop enemies from stopping your own progression.

I wanted to blow my opponents away in quicker circumstances. I played with some of the smaller, more geographically challenged nations and even played through as a nation questioning their current political views. For example, as North America I initiated attack on North Korea. Let’s face it, in a nuclear war the American’s would go after the North Koreans before they’d attack Britain. My point here is that it has a message to provide.

Blindflug are a self-proclaimed politically interested bunch of developers and their views do shine through strongly in the title. The introduction to the title mentions that even in 2014 the world has enough power to bomb itself back to the Stone Age. If you nuke a landmark city an overlay shows you how many people you just killed, it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay or the mechanics but gives you a sense that there is no winners in nuclear war. Its summary screen after a game is complete will even provide you with the message of “You Win?” and will show you how many people you killed, how many nations you destroyed and how many megatons of explosives you dropped. I feel that those statistics are less of a pat on the back and more a demonstration of what could honestly happen if one of these nations decided that today was the day to let fly.

It does lack any multiplayer functionality, it’s not a huge gap when you look at what the game is trying to achieve, but I feel that it may even help to provide its message with an even bigger force than it already does. Picture you are sitting with two friends playing First Strike. You are Western Europe, your opponents are Brazil and The United States. They quickly form an alliance and blow you up quicker than you can say “What the deuce?” and in Nuclear War, that could easily happen, and just as quickly! It may take some doing but a multiplayer option would be a huge thumbs up for me for this title.

In all honesty, First Strike: Nuclear Dawn is one of the most well rounded titles I’ve played on iOS and for it to be used for this genre on the tablet/phone platform is a bold, but well thought move. The music is suited to the environment and the sound effects work well when coupled with the UI elements. All of these well-crafted elements create a very immersive gameplay experience that should keep you coming back for more.

My only real concerns are that I’m not sure exactly how much enjoyment you can generate from a game like this when it has been completed on the hardest difficulty, with no multiplayer support. It wasn’t incredibly stable on my iPad mini and crashed occasionally mid fight, but this can obviously be patched closer to release or afterwards. I’m also concerned about the price point, Blindflug haven’t mentioned it anywhere on their material and with zero microtransactions to purchase I’m worried that they’ll price themselves into the “premium” market and have to go toe-to-toe with games such as Final Fantasy VI. Only time will tell when it is released in March on iOS and Android.

First Strike creates an unsettling view of nuclear power in today’s world. As you play, you can’t help but think that this could honestly happen at any moment and that almost takes the fun out of the title. It does make you take a step back and realise that this is still a huge danger in today’s world. It’s one of those rare games where the developer has set out to provide a clear message and delivers on this without being preachy or obnoxious. I tip my hat to Blindflug, a solid and well developed game with a solid message.

I have an update from Blindflug saying that they will have an update for stability in the launch release. Also they’ll be adding a multiplayer option if the game is received well. Go get this when it comes out guys!

Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball - Hudson Soft - SNES (1991)

What? I hear you ask. Yes, that’s right Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball for the SNES. Allow me to explain.

Bill Laimbeer was part of the notoriously rough Detroit Pistons team that won two NBA Championships in 1989 and 1990. He then went on to become a coach in the NBA and won numerous other accolades. Unless you’re a fan of late 80’s NBA that’s not really important. What is important is that his name and “likeness” were used for the first ever basketball game to be released for the Super Nintendo. There was no fanfare, no rapturous praise installed and no Game of the Year awards. In fact, I struggled to find any historic reviews at all, only finding two links on Wikipedia in which one reviewer stated:

“Ill-conceived controls, annoying sounds, and a number of other faults mar what could have been a guilty pleasure”

However, load it up now, and you might be pleasantly surprised. There’s no denying that it looks awful, the music is terrible and the controls come in 8 movements only, but, it has an undeniable charm.

I came across this game when playing some old SNES roms with a close friend. We were just mucking about with 2 player stuff. The usual, Bomberman, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2. He was good at Street Fighter, I was good at Bomberman, and we’re both bad at Mortal Kombat. It was a fun night, but little did we realise how much better it was going to get when we found the hidden gem that is Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball. Having a bit of a chuckle at the name we loaded it up to its Blood Dragon-esq opening screen.

And decided to give it a go. The game told us that the year was 2023 and that Bill Laimbeer has become the new commissioner of the NBA and throws out the rulebook. Contact is allowed, mines, bombs and other weapons litter the court and anything goes. (Well, you can’t go offside for some reason because you know, that breaks NBA protocol, but I digress) We immediately started to play, the first few games were tame. Hits here and there, little bit of banter. Cheering the 3 pointers. 30minutes later and we had become hardened veterans of Bill’s sick twisted game. Expletives were echoed around the living room, celebrations shook the building and the anger level was high. You FIGHT when you play Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball, you throw your minions around the screen attempting to knock the ball loose, you curse their entire families when they miss shots and you want to elect them as president when they manage to score that miraculous shot in the dying seconds. You are happy when you win, but you know that it came at a cost!

What made the 2 player experience of Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball incredibly entertaining and competitive? It’s simplified control scheme. One button to launch yourself at the ball carrier when you are on defence, one button to pass if used with a directional key and one button to shoot. All bound to the same button. We were both beginners and experts within 5 minutes and it felt good. This wasn’t like going up against a StarCraft Pro, or some Counter Strike wizard. Winning or losing purely came down to strategy and understanding of how far your guy would dive for the other guy.

We played this for hours, and I honestly think we tied victories by the end of it, but it was a whole load of fun. Thinking back it does bring a few questions that I think merit discussion in the age of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Why do we focus on having our tie-in titles be so serious?

Granted this was the age of Shaq Fu, and that endorsed games were big business. What’s stopping us in today’s age. Why can’t we have games like Ron Burgundy’s News Simulator or Leonardo Di Caprio’s Quest for an Oscar? Instead, we’re told that games that star celebrities need to be serious. Beyond Two Souls and The Last of Us for example. I can appreciate that the industry has grown with the age of its audience but surely we need games for fun. I know that Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball and Shaq Fu would have been developed to be serious titles, designed to generate revenue for their endorsed stars, but can’t we have a bit of fun with this?

Have we went backwards with mechanics and is this a good thing?

This is more of a concern outside the world of Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball but I feel it merits mention. This is a game that could very easily be adapted to tablet or smartphone. It would work well on this platform given its simplistic controls, I just fear that we are becoming a world of tappers. For all that is good, just have a look at Flappy Bird.

When was the last time you picked up a 2 player game and were both good at it straight away?

Nidhogg is probably the closest game I’ve seen to having this effect, but let’s be honest. Give someone 5 hours on Nidhogg and put them up against someone that’s never seen it before, they’re going to get absolutely slaughtered. There’s no tricks with Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball, no front flips over opponents, no speed boost abilities. Yeah, it might not be an in-depth title but for what it is, it works well.

Maybe I’m on my soapbox screaming about how I want my multiplayer experiences in games to be. Maybe I’m being far too nostalgic for my own good. Maybe, just maybe, we need more games like Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball.

The Sun at Night - Minicore Studios - PC (2014)

The Sun at Night is a 2D action platformer developed by Minicore Studios and attempts to provide an alternative reality portrayal of a dog named Laika. Laika was a real dog with a pretty tragic story, she was involved in the space race of the late 1950s and 1960s between the Soviets and the Americans. After the success of Sputnik 1, the first satellite launched into low orbit around the earth, the Russians wanted to test the impact of spaceflight on living creatures. Laika was a stray dog taken from the streets of Moscow then trained and selected to be launched aboard Sputnik 2. Laika was the first animal to orbit the Earth, but at the time there was no planned re-entry and Laika’s return to Earth was never expected. The Soviets claimed that after day 6 of the mission after her oxygen ran out or, as the Soviet government claimed, was euthanized prior to this. The face is that Laika died within hours after launch due to overheating.

This real life tragedy makes for compelling subject material and Minicore have decided to answer the question of “What If?” What if Laika makes it back to earth? Would she seek retribution? Would she be hailed as a hero? Would she have changed the face of the Cold War? There’s real scope here to tell create a powerful experience through a game and to highlight Laika’s story.

The game begins with you being shown a very short video of Laika crash landing on Earth. I only became aware of the backstory after watching some videos of the developers on their Steam Greenlight page, there’s no scope for this in the game. No explanation of who you are or what your overall goal is. Armed with Laika’s robotic suit, laser beam and full grasp of English in hand. You move forward, well, kill everything she comes across really. It’s a confusing change to what should be a tragic story, the first scene of the game opens with you shooting a seagull out of the sky with your laser beam, only to be found by a travelling soldier and to jump straight in his truck.

The mechanics of the game work well. I played with keyboard and mouse but it will run perfectly fine using a 360 pad. The controls are pretty smooth, overall combat feels rewarding and it is a pretty challenging game. Laika can use a force-field type shield that will block incoming damage and regenerates over time. Fail to use the shield and Laika will be mincemeat quickly, generating the feeling that Laika is pretty weak and defenceless without the shield. Which is nice, because she’s a dog, not a Super-soldier, it’s the right method to take. There’s a pretty large upgrade system and the game is open enough to not hold your hand and send you down tunnels. You can explore to your heart is content but it’s always pushing you in the direction it wants you to go in.

The artwork works well, Laika’s appearance and the majority of the NPCs are well realised and apart from enemies, are mostly unique. The animation can sometimes leave a lot to be desired but it’s not enough to be game breaking. For example, Laika’s blaster attack moves as smoothly as you would expect. The weapon has a 360 degree range of fire and this leads it to clip through Laika at strange and unusual angles. Also the enemies die and fade out, leaving nothing behind. The way the game is developed can sometimes have you kill an enemy off screen, not see that you’ve killed this character and then when you go looking find that it was dispatched of and has disappeared without a trace.

To complement the upgrade system there is a consumable known as Nano, this can be converted to health packs and shield packs among other things but is more of a pickup from the ground than a drop from the enemy. I never felt that I was really progressing until I was lucky enough to find this in random areas of the world and not be rewarded for killing that big old bad boss. It would also help with the feedback that you had killed an enemy if it left this behind. The Nano system is a two sided sword as it lets you chose what’s best for the task at hand and how your inventory is shaping up. I rarely used the shield packs and found that I was mostly using Nano for health. As the game progressively got harder I was using more and more health packs to the point where there was no real option. Nano = Health.

The chiptune music fits compliments the overall tone of the game and really drives the atmosphere of each area of the game. It’s not really hard to do right, but it’s nice to know when an area is safe and when the difficulty just shifted up a gear. The sound could be drastically overhauled in my honest opinion. All of the Soviet guards die in an echoed groan, and the transitions between scenes are just not that believable.

My biggest concern when taking into account the emotion of Laika’s real story has is that you are expected to instantly sympathise with her character. This was a horrible thing to happen in real life but when you give her a laser beam gun and have her go toe-to-toe with genetically modified tigers and bears I don’t really see the difference? I don’t see why I should feel sorry for Laika but not for the tiger? They’ve turned a selfless, dependant creature into a savage killing machine with no emotion. It just doesn’t add up at all. I’m frustrated as there’s so much scope for this story. When the developer could have had us control Sputnik 2 by making its onboard computers become self-aware and have us micromanage the trip back to Earth, trying to save Laika at every moment, that’s a game I can buy into.

Unfortunately I can’t help but think that “The Sun at Night” is trying to be cool and edgy. It was initially known as "Laika Returns” a much more descriptive title, and I’m left wondering why it was changed? Its overall mechanics work fine, but the story and method of delivery are way off the mark. Unfortunately, there’s nothing unique enough here for me to want to come back to “The Sun at Night” and that’s a shame, as the material they chose to work with is very strong. It’s the Indie Dante’s Inferno. Strong material, way off target game.