Dungeon Keeper takes real-time strategy into a fantasy setting. You command a dungeon and its hellish minions, and must take them to glory against the hated good guys. You must use your gold to build a fortress and weapons to attack.
As well as being able to rotate the 3D view, and control the light source, you can enter the direct viewpoints of your men, to see life through their eyes (one character’s mode goes into black and white for this). …
Pirate Hunter is a pirate-themed game very much like Sid Meier’s Pirates!. You start out as a new face as either a buccaneer in the service of his majesty or as a pirate and set out to be the most feared pirate among traders or most feared buccaneer among pirates.
The game has 16 different scenarios and features a large world in the 16th century Caribbean where other pirates, merchants, buccaneers and transport convoys travel. As a pirate you can buy bigger and more powerful, or smaller and more agile ships and eventually conquer cities as well. The player has to choose one of the 4 nations (Spain, France, England or Holland) and your governor provides numerous missions and resources to take care of you and your crew, to gain more wealth and power. …
Tortuga – Pirates of the New World (Pirate Hunter – Seize & Destroy)Read More »
X-COM: Terror from the Deep is the follow-up to the resource management and tactical combat game X-COM: Enemy Unknown.
It has been 40 years since X-COM last defeated the aliens. Now, in the year of 2040, aliens begin to appear on the Earth again. This time the threat to humanity is coming from the depths of oceans.
The game is almost identical to the original X-COM game. The user interface, weapons, and aliens are all the same. The only difference is the adaptation of the aliens and weapons (e.g. new hand-to-hand weapons) to the ocean environment. The game features both undersea and on-land missions, and is significantly harder than its predecessor. …
In the year 1998, the amount of reports of UFO sightings has been drastically increased. Stories about abductions and alien attacks became more and more widespread. Finally, after various nations of the world have failed to intercept the UFOs, their representatives met in a conference of global importance in Geneva, Switzerland. It was eventually decided to organize a secret paramilitary group, dubbed Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM). Starting with one base, two fighters, one transport, and a few soldiers, X-COM must locate the aliens, learn about their origins and technology, find out where their base is, and destroy it.
X-COM: UFO Defense is a strategy game featuring separate but interlinked elements. On the strategic side, called GeoScape, you get a rotating view of the globe, where you see all visible UFOs (those that are within your detection range) as well as major cities and your base(s). You order movements from here, such as sending out fighters to intercept UFOs, transports with soldiers to assault/recover UFOs, and perhaps assaults on alien bases (if you find any). You also control your research, as you must invent better weapons (the Terran weapons are just no match against the alien weapons) quickly, not to mention all the other cool tech you can recover from the aliens. You also need to control your budget, as you can’t afford to overextend your reach. Researchers need to be paid, engineers (who build the new toys) need to be paid, base(s) need to be be built/expanded, planes need to be bought/maintained, supplies need to be replenished, and so on. …
Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring takes the highly acclaimed, much loved Fantasy story, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and converts it into a Real Time Strategy game. In it, you can choose to lead the forces of Good or the forces of Evil as each struggle to control the One Ring.
The game is split into two 10-mission campaigns, giving you the chance to take a look at some of the aspects of the LOTR storyline that weren’t focused in the books. In the Good campaign, you follow Legolas, Gimli and Boromir as manage to show up in Rivendell just in time to join the Fellowship of the Ring. In the Evil campaign, you must lead the forces of Sauron, break out of Mordor and besiege the city of Minas Tirith.
Instead of being based on the movie license, the game is devoted exclusively to the books, so you will not hear the actors from the movies in the game. …
FireFly Studios’ Stronghold is a combination of a building simulation (like SimCity) and a real-time strategy game. The player can build and conquer castles, populate lands with his peasants and defend his estate from invaders.
Castle management involves food production, resource gathering, processing supplies and weapons production. Peasants must be satisfied and efficient, and these needs are done through food ration sizes, tax (or bribe) management, nice or cruel town elements (boost happiness and efficiency respectively), religion and popularity supervision. Should popularity rise above 50, more peasants will enter the castle until the capacity is filled, otherwise they will leave, and all production will eventually halt. Occasional disasters can occur, such as plague, fires, sudden apple tree rots and even attacks from wild animals and bandits. Many of these can be avoided (with apothecaries, wells, and proper defenses), while others cannot. These events can sometimes affect popularity as well. …
Firefly Studios’ Stronghold Crusader is the standalone expansion pack to the 2001 Stronghold. In Stronghold Crusader, the player can command either Crusaders or Arabs loyal to Saladin.
The four historic campaigns, which serve as training for different gameplay aspects, follow the first three Crusades, in which the player alternates between commanding Crusader and Arabian forces. New to the game are the desert environment, which holds fertile farming land only in small oases, and Arabian troops available from the Mercenary Post, which do not require weapon production, but are either cheap and only useful in numbers, or powerful but double the price of their European counterparts. Depending on the campaign and the player-set options, the Lord unit can either have a Crusader or an Arabian skin, which also reflects on the cursor (sword or saber).
The game introduces and prominently stresses the skirmish mode, where the player can choose a map and fight against several opponents who do not only differ in appearance, but also in competence and play styles. The four dukes from the original Stronghold (The Rat, The Snake, The Pig and The Wolf) make a return, and they are joined by Saladin, The Sultan, The Caliph, and Richard The Lionheart. Three additional adversaries (Emperor Frederick I, King Phillip I and the Sheriff of Nottingham) were distributed separately in exclusive bonus discs in select stores, but are available for free download on the official website and were part of subsequent re-releases of the game, Stronghold Crusader Extreme and Stronghold Crusader HD. …