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I decided to tackle another game in my steam backlog and Anomaly always sort of interested me. From what I understood, it was basically a tower defense game “in reverse”, meaning you control the line of mobs navigating between the enemy towers. My assumptions were pretty much spot on, but the game still managed to surprise me.

It’s fun, there’s no doubt about that. As someone who always preferred to just play through the campaign of an RTS and then leave the game, this one suits me perfectly. The plot is a classic. It involves an alien invasion and a platoon of badass soldiers saving the day. The story is OK, but nothing special.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth Screenshot

Anomaly is definitely an extremely good-looking game.

I played the game for quite a bit today, and managed to get to level 11. Based on the available achievements, I’m guessing I’m nearing the end of the campaign already, so It’s not a very long game. Still, for the amount of money I paid for it (discounted greatly), I thin it provides plenty of fun. There’s also a couple of extra modes to unlock, but I haven’t tried those yet. They might be fun, though.The gameplay is fun, though. You buy your units, upgrade them, put them in proper formations and then navigate through the streets, trying to find the best rout to kill the enemy towers with minimal losses on your side. Apart from giving orders to your units, you also control your character, their commander. He needs to walk around his troops, using the abilities of his powered suit to help out on the battlefield. You get four abilities, which unlock throughout the game. There’s a repair ability, a smoke screen, a decoy, and an air strike. You can’t spam the same ability multiple times, but you can use different abilities together, creating a strong combination. For instance, a decoy protected by a smoke screen will last much, much longer than on it’s own.

My army usually consists of a highly armored unit in front, followed by a shield generator and several high damage units. Now that I’ve unlocked the tank and the dragon, though, I might abandon the missile launchers completely. I’ll see how it goes.

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Today was somewhat of a slow day, with no lengthy sessions. On the few occasions that I had some spare time to waste, I’ve returned to some of the “older” games.

Saint’s Row: The Third

First I had to validate the game files and download 80 megabytes of data in order to make the game playable again. It seems something get’s lost when you reinstall Windows, so the game starts crashing on startup. I decided to try and get some of the achievements, but this failed. There was still progress, though. I finished a couple of the assassination tasks and completed a few of the challenges, including the Powerslide, Streaking, Helicopter Destruction and Boat Destruction challenges. None of them are directly tied to an achievement, but they eventually add up, so progress was made. Other than that, I bought some upgrades and that’s about it.

Titan Attacks

After about 10 attempts that failed quickly, I managed to get one past the boss of the Saturn zone. As a reward for this, I got access to what seems to be the final, Titan zone. Saturn was a breeze compared to it. All the enemies can take plenty of hits, a rain of bullets is constantly covering the screen, and there’s so many parachuting aliens I either have to kill them, or i die trying to collect them all. Most of my attempts failed at the second level of the zone, but I did manage to squeeze a few through, all the way up to level 91. At 90, there was what looked like a boss, but I guess they just add bosses as regular enemies now, because he was easy to beat and I got nothing for it.

Titan Attacks - Game Over

I’ve been seeing this phrase a lot lately.

Toki Tori

This morning, the game was crashing, for some reason. I wasn’t even able to start a level. Verifying and reinstalling did nothing, so I gave up and tried Titan Attacks. This evening, though, the game ran fine. After some rest, the solution to the level I got stuck on came to me easily. All I needed to do was to stop the brick that was blocking the ladder from falling below by building a bridge over the gap. Once that was done, everything else was easy. The next few levels held me back for a few moments but were eventually dealt with. I got to somewhere around level 10 of this second world, I believe, and that’s where I got stuck again. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be smart again.

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Other than a single, but lengthy Diablo III session, I also managed to squeeze in some time for two more games today.

Titan Attacks

The first one was Titan Attacks. As I said last time, I managed to get to the Saturn world. Today, I tried to get past it, but I couldn’t even get close after several attempts. In fact, I have yet to reach the boss. The enemies that get to me are those big guys that drop down and leave a few of those mines behind. I find it nearly impossible to get in front of them to even be able to shoot them. The window of opportunity is extremely small, and if you get unlucky enough to get a few of them behind each other, it get’s pretty much impossible. After several failed attempts, the rage got to me, so I’ll try again some other time, perhaps in a few days.

Toki Tori Screenshot

Toki Tori is an extremely colorful game.

Toki Tori

The second game was a new one I decided to give a try. Toki Tori is a puzzle in which you use a limited inventory of items to avoid enemies and collect all the eggs on a level. It looks simple, but pretty, the music gives it a happy atmosphere, and overall, it feels fun to play. I’m not sure where or how I got the game, but I’m guessing it was part of a bundle I bought in the past. I have this problem now where I need to get almost every bundle released, so I suffer from a clogged backlog of games. To think I used to almost exclusively pirate…

I managed to complete the first world and got a few levels into the second one. There were some hiccups along the way, but overall, the puzzles were relatively simple up to now. When it gets down to it, it’s about navigating the level in the correct order by using the items you have available. Right now, I’m stuck on a level where there’s only one egg to collect, but I’m not sure how to use the combination of Bridges and Brick Switches to get to it.

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This morning I had another session of Diablo III. This time, I managed to clear the normal difficulty with my monk. All in all, it wasn’t very difficult, as expected for the first difficulty. Nearing the end of act 3, I got extremely lucky with some item drops, which made my dexterity skyrocket, meaning I was killing most basic enemies with two or three hits from a one-handed weapon.

Diablo 3 - Ending Cinematic

Normal difficulty cleared!

I started it up on Nightmare immediately, just so I could see if it will be a steamroll in the first act, and it looks like it will. Over the next few days, I might not play this one as much, though, because real world obligations are kicking in, and Diablo is a game with lengthy gaming sessions.

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I got a bit tired of my wizard, so I decided to give it a try with a monk. I named him Aang, for obvious reasons.

It was definitely fun. I had some hard time properly targeting enemies because i was used to attacking from ranged and leading my shots, so I ended up running around stuff a lot, but I’m slowly getting used to it. I’m mostly using the third primary skill, the one that attacks in the circle. For my secondary skill, I use the one that makes you charge through and knock back enemies around you, with the rune that reduces spirit cost. It helps me get around easier and charge towards health orbs when things get tough.

Diablo 3 - Optional Boss

This is an optional boss, blocking the way to an optional area.

As for the rest of my skills, I use the self heal with the damage rune, the dash, the seven palms one and the dodge increase buff. I found that I do plenty of damage pretty much with my primary skill alone, so as you see, most of my other skills are utility or survivability. This allows me to move around mobs, destroying groups from the side, instead of allowing them to surround me. If they do, though, I can hold my own for a while, do some great AoE damage and heal myself if necessary. Once it gets too tough, I just knock them back and charge out.

I managed to get to act III, pretty much in one sitting, and I had a lot of fun. Also, my first legendary/unique item dropped – an awesome two handed hammer with insane damage, considering it’s required level is only 14. I used it for a while and then put it in the stash. My future barbarian is going to love it.

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This morning, I played some Diablo 3 again, and I was still having fun. For now, the patch seems to be working.

I managed to clear the entirety of the first act and get to the beginning of the second. For the most part, it was challenging, but not impossible. I died a total of about a dozen times, but considering my gear was still mostly below level 60, it wasn’t surprising.

Diablo 3 - Desert Screenshot

Back to the desert.

My play style is still the same. I use Venom Hydra and Arcane Orb with the increased AoE rune as my main damage dealers. The Eletrocute recharges my arcane power via Surge of Power, and Diamond Skin and Mirror Image are used defensively when needed. Energy Shield is my offensive/defensive buff of choice.

In any case, I’m act two now, but I haven’t tried actually playing yet. From what I hear, the difficulty should ramp up quite a lot now.

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As a lot of gamers are probably aware, Patch 1.0.4 for Diablo III was released this past week. The two of you that are actually reading this blog might also be aware that I kind of got bored of the game a few weeks ago, and possibly even wrote about it.

Suffice to say, I was hopeful with the game, and it is a good game, but it doesn’t have that magical something that Diablo II had. I’m not sure what it is, but it doesn’t have it. The game felt more like a grind than an addiction. It might be even possible we, as gamers, outgrew the formula, but I doubt it. It was probably just the combination of a bunch of minor things being not quite there at the same time.

Diablo 3 - Hell Screenshot, Wizard

Hell hath no fury like a wizard scorned.

In any case, patch 1.0.4 tried to add some of that magic back in. I gotta say, it may be a successful attempt, to a degree. I tried playing my wizard again, and I actually enjoyed myself. The fights aren’t as annoying, or as hard, those unbeatable enemy combinations don’t seem to happen anymore, there’s more drops, everything is just less annoying. Now, It might be that this is because I haven’t played in a while, but I truly think the patch had something to do with it. There’s hope for this game yet, I guess.

Anyway, I played my wizard, and I managed to beat Hell. I also managed to get to level 60, so it’s time to do some grinding (hopefully the fun kind) in Inferno. Thanks to some of the gear I bought (for gold, not real money), Diablo wasn’t that hard. I had to be alert, but I managed to kill him on my first attempt, almost dying only twice.

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He really doesn’t. I just don’t have the willpower for anything more complex than that. Again, it was hot as hell today, and again, this was the only game I could play.

Binding of Isaac, Steam Achievements.

One Step Closer (Linkin Park works here in more ways than one).

In the end, thanks to the high damage technology, the Cathedral was easy to beat. Since this was the first time beating it with Judas, this makes me one step closer to unlocking the Chest.I did a bit better, though. I only played for two sessions as Judas, but this was enough to beat the Cathedral on my second run. This unlocked another achievement, and another item – The Curved Horn. It was a pretty sweet run to. I managed to get Technology early on, followed by several damage upgrades. I was also lucky with trinkets and consumables. I managed to get the safety cap just a couple of rooms before getting mom’s coin purse, allowing me to get a huge amount of upgrades. I was low on natural health, but lucky for me, I also got the Mitre, basically making me drown in spirit hearts.

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Today, we measured 38 degrees Celsius here in Croatia. Suffice to say, I’m hardly in the mood to do anything, let alone do any serious gaming.What I did was to try and play a few rounds of The Binding of Isaac.

I’m not sure if it’s the heat, or if it’s because I haven’t been playing it for a while, but I got rusty, extremely rusty. I mean, I was never an awesome Isaac player, but right now, I’m having a hard time actually reaching mom, when satan used to have a common appearance.

Still, I was persistent, so I managed to eventually finish the cathedral once with Cain, and also managed to finish a challenge, the one called “Dark Was The Night”, which unlocked The Candle as a new item. I’ve seen it in action on some Youtube let’s play’s, so I’m looking forward to using it.

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Puppy Games gave this game (or any other one from their library) for free a few months ago. I tried it back then, but I never played it extensively, since that’s probably not the way this game is meant to be played.

Basically, it’s a Space Invaders clone with blocky, but flashy graphics, which allows you to earn cash and upgrade your tank between levels. It’s a simple formula, but one that’s highly engaging. There are plenty of levels and upgrades to go through, as well as a lot of achievements to unlock.

I’ve been playing it sporadically since the day I got it, but I’ve been stuck on the moon “world” for a while now, because I kept getting killed by the boss. This morning, I finally managed to get past it, and then I went past the next world, Mars, on my first attempt.

Titan Attack Screenshot

The difficulty curve basically goes flat during the Mars levels.

Saturn followed after Mars and I managed to reach the end boss there on the very same attempt, but I didn’t manage to beat it. Still, I got a new high score (which is pathetic, compared to online scores) and I managed to upgrade all of my add-ons, which got me an achievement.

All in all, it’s a very fun game, so don’t be surprised if you see more of these posts.