Despite what comments I may make in this review, The Ball is an iconic game. It’s impossible to review this title without explaining (for those of you that might not know) the history of The Ball and its significance.

Up until recently the video game industry has one great, big, major roadblock. That was that the license costs for game engines and builders were astronomical…at least for average Joe. Many aspiring game devs (myself included) waded through the muddy backwaters of the internet to try and find engines we could build games on. The Unreal engine (which I’m sure you most commonly know from the Unreal Tournament titles and recently a vast number of releases including Gears of War, Enslaved and Darksiders to name a few) released its development platform 100% scott-free. You can legitimately grab yourself a copy and get building; the launch was the aspiring game dev’s wet dream. You could fully develop a game and pay the commercial licensing to Unreal only once it’s finished…it is, to all in intents and purposes the holy grail of Developer software. So where does The Ball come in to this?

Unreal launched a massive campaign to champion its new free platform, the winner of the competition being none other than The Ball. At that time the game was the shining icon of Unreal development, as well the example of what people could now do for free.

So a long time later Teotl Studios released The Ball as a full blown commercial game.  This is what I thought….

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Gameplay

The Ball really started life as a small indie project. It’s transformation to retail was arguably a leap too far. Unfortunately, the gameplay elements that make The Ball a potentially brilliant game cause many of its downfalls. The premise is fairly simple- you have a ball you can control, either by pulling it to you or firing it away from you. It can attach to objects you can then move (and it also comes in handy as a weapon).
One thing I did enjoy was the ingenuity of some of the puzzles.  Many of them were really challenging and a lot of time I had to tip my hat to Teotl. I definitely didn’t know a ball could so many neat things and, for the most part I really felt as though the developers sat down and thought through these tasks carefully. Some of the interesting elements were ones which added water. You had to start thinking not only in linear way but start focusing on layers above and below you. Given the physics, which were mightily impressive, you really needed to consider when and where the ball (and you) would go.
The team at Teotl did a great job conjuring up puzzles and tasks to complete with the ball and I can really see why a lot of critics want to compare this to the brilliant Portal title. Unfortunately, the similarities between controlling an environment altering object with a hand held super-gizmo ends there. If you’re going to compare The Ball to the Portal then there’s a bunch of elements The Ball seriously falls short on. One of my biggest gripes was that it’s incredibly easy to lose the ball. Worse still, there’s no way of easily locating the ball. There’s a distance counter, although if your ball is stuck round a corner and you can’t pull it towards you it’s about time to start searching. The game seemed to have a huge amount of dead-ends in its mazes. I constantly found myself asking “why the hell is this tunnel here?” There was nothing to discover or collect in these tunnels, really these dead-ends slowly ate away at my sanity until I developed a nervous twitch every time I was unfortunate enough to go down one. There was only one fate worse than getting lost down these passages though…..losing the damn Ball down one. I’ve already explained that if you do lose the ball it’s not always easy to get it back. Straight on to the creatures and combat- well, there’s not much to tell. The combat system is really, really basic. You just grab your ball and smash, simple. There wasn’t a fight where this wasn’t the case and the ingenuity of all the puzzles was lost on the creatures.
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if all these underground creatures were former players who’d slowly lost their minds getting lost in the tunnels. I was pretty tempted to join them at some points.
I’ll admit, it felt satisfying mauling waves of creatures with a giant rolling ball. Grabbing the ball and waving it about like a wrecking crew was definitely entertaining, but, it kind of loses its appeal after you do it 9,000 times. At times I think the addition of the creatures was more of an afterthought, something the developers added in, hoping to spice up the gameplay. In some ways it did, if only to keep your mind from focusing on the nightmare of navigating each level.

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Presentation and Difficulty

Beautiful! This game just bursts with polished textures, gorgeous ambient lighting and tight models. There’s a reason this game won “Make something Unreal”. On the face of it The Ball is a perfect poster boy for the Unreal SDK; Teotl really goes to town with everything the Unreal SDK had to offer at the time of release. It’s not often I find myself really impressed by the environment around me but damn, in my opinion Teotl could teach the hard hitters in the industry a thing or do about environment design. So how difficult was The Ball? Well, it was ok. I think if you’re going to contrast The Ball to any other “similar “game, it really doesn’t stand up to say- Portal. The game elements certainly became a bit more diverse and interesting through the progression of the campaign, but it didn’t necessarily become harder. There were certainly occasions where I would think “well, that new approach is nice” but I never once found it much more challenging. Perhaps this says something about how intuitive the game was? I’m not sure whether the game got more diverse or just more….bearable. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

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Final Words

There have been a lot of criticisms dropped here about The Ball. And I think that Teotl may have done better to leave their title as the Unreal Mod that won them so much acclaim. Perhaps in putting a commercial sticker over their title they’ve (sorry for the pun) dropped the ball on this one. As I said at the start of this review- The Ball is a paragon of the Unreal development kit. Whether you know it or not, it stands as an extremely important landmark in the video game industry. I tried to put aside its legacy when I reviewed this title and judge it toe-to-toe with other fully commercial releases. I’ve come to conclude that The Ball (the game) treads the fine line(s) between indie, tech and commercial- and really falls short on all of them. I’ve also come to conclude that The Ball (the Unreal Mod) is a champion of the industry and well, we should all just take a moment to reflect on what it means. No? Just me…?

7/10 (for the art+ the significance of the game).

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Armada 2526 is a turn based strategy game and upon first view this appears to be ‘Civilization IV in space’. The premise being to colonize different planets whilst managing research and diplomacy before engaging in warfare against other races.

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There are seventeen different races that can be played each with their own slight differences giving different strengths and weaknesses which gives it an ongoing playability factor with each game having a slightly different feel. However unlike Civilization the number of scenarios that you can play in is quite limited, there are only 4 one of which is the tutorial, which reduces the scope for different tactics to be employed which damages the re playability of the game.

As with Civilization the game starts with a bit of a gold rush where players attempt to grab as many of the free star systems as possible to give them better opportunity for resource. Unlike Civilization the resources available at each system are limited in their scope which reduces the tactical element of which systems to go for first. Some are more hostile than others making things more expensive and some have asteroid belts that can be mined but there is none of the complexity that Civilization delivers. For example which resources you have managed to obtain as no effect on the tech tree and what units you can use or technologies you can research.

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In the same way as in Civilization there is a trade off between routes through the game depending on choice of buildings and research options. For example you could place emphasis on mining to generate cash or technology that speed up growth, or you could research weapons and build ships with a view to warfare against your neighbors. This choice matters and has a marked effect on the game as concentrating on one area to the exclusion of the others will come back and bite you as you start to run of cash of planetary populations start rioting.

The game is quite absorbing whilst not being up to the standard of Civilization however there are a number of things that less this game down of which the primary one is the interface. The various pop up screens that are activated by selecting radial buttons for research and construction are not movable on the screen and only one can be opened at a time. Which means there is a lot of opening and closing as you move backward and forward from the research screen to the map screen and back and similarly with the system view where buildings and ships can be created. These screens are all interlinked and the game can get quite complex in the same way that Civilization can and not being able to compare the contents of these screens at the same time means that you’re constantly having to try and remember the content of one screen whilst flicking to the next. There were also some graphical glitches on some of the buttons when you hovered them which made the game feel a little unpolished. the other issue with the interface is that whilst it is functional it is not particularly pretty and fails to make you want to play the game. Due to the nature of the game you spend a lot of time staring at this interface and it could do with being cleaner and better designed.

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Another issue is the tutorial, this is quite a difficult game to just pick up and play out of the box and as a result needs a good tutorial to lead you into it. Whilst the tutorial does cover all the major areas of the game mechanics it doesn’t allow you to do things as you read often a tutorial box pops up which can be several pages which gives you a lot of information. You have to remember quite a lot of content before you can get back to the game-play and try out what you have just read which means that you are constantly have to refer back to the in-game advice as you have forgotten something in the three pages of tutorial blurb you have to just had to try and remember.

Lastly the warfare mechanism is a bit pointless. The game loads a separate battle arena around a planet in the same way that the total war series does but unfortunately the comparison ends there. This could have been used to give the game a different dimension to make it something special. Unfortunately the tactics are limited to what formations you have you ships in (a choice of 3) and how you group your ships, other than that it is purely a matter of which types of units you bring to the party and how many. There is little opportunity for clever play resulting in you beating a more numerous opponent. It would have been nice if the system you were fighting in had some sort of effect on the battle itself, possibly the planets magnetic field effecting different ships in different ways. This area of the game seems pointless and I quickly resorted to just auto completing the battles I fought as to do otherwise just results in additional load times as the battel arena is switched to. The other thing which lets this area down is it is quite poor graphically, again if this was better then you may enter the battle scenes purely for the spectacle but this is just another factor contributing to the pointlessness of this area of the game.

Overall the game is quite absorbing and once you mastered the tutorial, started auto completing the battles, and have got to grips with the interface is enjoyable. However the down sides to this game hinder the enjoyment. Never the less if you enjoyed the Civilization series and are looking for something a little different then you will probably get some mileage out of this game. However if you are new to genre then I recommend waiting for Civilization V due out next month as it is likely to be a much better game given that Civ IV which is now quite an old game managed to better in may areas than Armada 2526.

Sudogamer scores it  6/10.

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Here is another simulator game that can trace its lineage to the famous IL-2 series. Gaijin studios who developed IL-2: Birds of Prey for consoles have entered the hardcore PC market with Wings of Prey. With Wings Of Prey they promise a new graphics engine, better game play and many new aircraft, amongst other things.

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Wings of Prey offers different levels of difficulty – from arcade-style to simulator so that everyone can play it. Although the game can be played using the keyboard, I highly recommend you get a joystick or some other controller (not sure whether an Xbox controller is compatible with the game) since it will be easier to play (anyone who has tried landing an airplane in Flight Simulator ’98 using keyboard knows what I’m talking about).

The main menu offers several single player modes: tutorial, campaign, single missions and training. They are pretty self-explanatory – the tutorial section is a very good place for every beginner to start from. The first tutorial starts with you at the controls of a Spitfire Mk II fighter and teaches you the basics of flying – turning, climbing, descending and landing. As you progress, the tutorials get more challenging with the last ones teaching you the basics of air to air and air to ground combat (the fun stuff).

[singlepic id=93 w=320 h=240 float=center]The campaign mode offers you six theatres of war to engage in. They follow historical order – starting with The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Sicily, the Ardennes offensive and finally Berlin. Each campaign starts with a documentary video. Campaigns consist of several missions which you have to play in historical order. To progress to the next campaign you have to complete all missions from the previous one.

The most interesting part of the single player is the Training mode. Here you can set up instant action missions. You can choose your airplane, part of Europe where the battle takes place, number of computer enemies and weather.

[singlepic id=105 w=320 h=240 float=centerI found this mode the best if you don’t have time to go through the campaigns or the long single player missions.

At first I didn’t expect to get high frame rates since I was testing Wings of Prey on a laptop (a good one, but a laptop nevertheless) and chose medium graphics settings. Even at those settings, I have to say the visuals are very impressive. The ground, water and sky look very realistic. The details modeled on the ground are simply stunning – the green fields, roads and trees almost make you feel you are flying in the real world. When flying low over the trees I noticed that their branches swing in the wind. I can only imagine what this game will look and feel like at max level of detail. But enough about the scenery, let’s now look at what airplanes the player can get his (her) hands on.

Wings of Prey offers a wide variety of airplanes to choose from. Basically, you get to fly the most famous Russian, British, American and German airplanes of WW2 – from the old Russian I-153 biplane to the Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane and the P-51 Mustang. You can even fly the German WW2 rocket plane Me-163 ‘Komet’ which can go up to 600 km/h (considered fast those days). For those of you who are fans of flying heavy metal you can also fly bombers like the Junkers Ju-88, Heinkel He-111, Vickers Wellington and the B-17 Flying Fortress and hone your area bombing skills.

When it comes to game realism I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. If you are (like me) one of those hardcore simulator fans [singlepic id=99 w=320 h=240 float=center]and choose the realistic mode, then you have to follow all the procedures like the real WW2 pilots did. If you leave your engine too long operating at maximum RPM, then don’t wonder why after a while your speed gradually starts to drop and then your engine quits. If, during combat your speed gets too low and you keep pulling back on the stick to reach the bad guy don’t be surprised if suddenly the airplane enters a flat spin and starts going down uncontrollably. By the way, when the airplane goes into a spin, the ground around you blurs because of the motion – a pleasant camera effect that adds an almost movie-like dimension to the game.

The damage model in the sim is also realistic. When playing against a computer He-111 bomber, I damaged one of its engines and black smoke started to come out of it. When moving in for the kill I flew in the black smoke and my canopy suddenly became black. Later I realised that this was because of the leaking oil from the bomber’s engine.

For those of you who would rather fight against human opponents the game offers several multiplayer modes – from simple cooperative mission with two players on VoIP to large multiplayer lobbies and missions. You get access to the latter once you register your game online.

Well, that’s all the time I had to review. Overall, I am very impressed with Wings of Prey. If you are interested in airplanes, the game can offer you hours of fun as it takes you back in time and teaches you some of the tricks that the realpilots of those days used. It also offers you the opportunity to take part in the major air battles of WW2 – all from the safety of your own home.

[written by Nikolay Stoychev]

Sudogamer score: 8 out of 10

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