Eufloria thoughts

Some of you may have heard of Eufloria, an indie game developed by Rudolf Kremers and Alex May (yes, I know; actual people). You may have seen screenshots on Steam, and thought something along the lines of- "Huh. That looks pretty neat."

And it kind of is. The game is essentially a very basic RTS/ space sim. You have asteroids on which grow trees. The trees make seedlings, which you can tell to go to other asteroids and make more trees. If there are bad seedlings on the other asteroids, your dudes will fight them. One of you will win, and get to plant your trees on that asteroid.

That's the entire game, more or less; there are different types of trees and such, but it never gets overly complicated (or hasn't yet- I haven't beaten it). The art style looks pretty amazing, and some of the procedural generation stuff is pretty cool. The soundtrack is nice too, with a very ambient, calming quality to it.

The problem lies in just how slow this game is. The enemies NEVER attack you. I played the first five levels in full screen, but after that I windowed it and just waited for my seedlings to build up (I'm actually doing that right now). It's really such a basic thing that it's not even really a distraction, as everything is automated, pretty much. This means that you're not really playing a game, in the end, but rather doing a few clicks a minute, and listening to the music (which I have since turned off to listen to my own).

It's a shame, because the game looks like it could be so much more. The AI just really isn't up to scratch though, and having to wait 5 minutes to build up an army big enough to take out their defences just sucks. If the game had multiplayer, it would be way better. But it doesn't.

A disappointment, in the end. A nice idea, poorly thought through.

Uncharted 2 thoughts.

So I've been playing Uncharted 2 since Thursday (it's Sunday now), and man... That game is pretty good. I'd been messing around in the multiplayer beta for a while before launch, but have yet to go back to it. Why? The single player experience is amazingly well crafted; it's the first Uncharted, but better. In every way.

For a start, the graphics. I'm not a graphics whore (or at least I don't admit that I am), but wow. They're quite something. The claims of "best looking game ever" are not true; that's still Crysis in my humble opinion. That said, some of the stuff it does is really impressive; the way Drake gets wet, or covered in snow. The depth of field effect also looks pretty; focusing on something close up, then switching to a far away object can remove one's breath. The character animation is fantastic, too, adding even more personality to the fantastic Nathan Drake.

This is really where the strength of Uncharted lies; Nathaniel (is that his real name?) and his supporting cast. The story is actually pretty good, but it's really a by the numbers swashbuckling tale, and it's the characters that draw you in. The movie like presentation of the whole piece is just done so well; I would say no game has ever told a story this well.

The action is pretty fantastic too, and such a huge improvement over the first game; enemies no longer soak up bullets, but go down "realistically". The number of guns is just about right to give each a different feel, but still has enough that Nathan isn't stuck with one weapon for multiple hours.

Not that he could hang on to them anyway; the game is really about the continuous stream of more and more ridiculous action sequences; running from a helicopter, fighting dudes on a train, or running from a tank. The game doesn't stop (much), and it really is a blast to play.

But hey, I've still got 3 chapters to go, and they might be shit.