Swords and Soldiers, a Wiiware game, (and there aren’t many of those) is a game that manages to cunningly evade catagorisation. It’s probably closest to a real-time strategy, but rather than being from an isometric (or other) perspective, it’s from a side on view, with no horizontal space, except for the occasional diverging path. You have two bases at either end of the maps, and each send troops to attack the other You also don’t “control” your units in the traditional way, you just build them and send them to attack the enemy.
Essentially it’s a toned-down RTS: there’s some light resource management- building villagers to mine gold, Age of Empires style; there’s some tactical thinking – When exactly do I spam the ‘build soldier’ button and then use my super-power to annihilate the enemy defense; and there’s some light entertainment, in the form of three comical teams : the Vikings; the Aztecs and the Chinese, and each has a comical motivation – the Chinese’s baby emperor wants toys, so his armys are trying to find said toys, the Vikings want barbequeue sauce, and so on.
Each of the teams has a pleasently unique aesthetic, troop compliment and play style. The Aztecs, for example, don’t generate mana (which powers traps and the aforementioned superpower) nearly as fast as the other teams, so they have the power to sacrifice their troops for mana, which is interesting. Admittedly each team essetially boils down to fighter, ranged, magic, tank and ‘other’, but they are all varied and interesting enough to make you want to play with all of them.
This game is great fun – I was reminded when playing it of Plants vs Zombies, and realised Popcap could have made this game. This game could well have sold me on the idea of Wiiware, but since everything else on it is a cavalcade of Wii-diocrity, and you can get Flash games on Kongregate that are almost as much fun, I’ll reserve my enthusiasm. However, that shouldn’t detract from what is ultimately a brilliant product.
Robert Beach checks out what Romino has to to offer at Pax East.
Press release: Ever since Chief Meat made his cameo in our hit game Swords & Soldiers, people have been asking us what became of him. Finally, all your questions will be answered, because as of today the friendly butcher receives his own DLC campaign!
GamesBeat reached out to some key games industry figures (from Nintendo, 2D Boy, Gaijin Games, and more) to ask which Wii titles they think deserved a wider audience. Here are their thoughts.
There's so many great games on Wii that get overlooked, and then gamers complain about no new games... How about A Boy and His Blob, Sin and Punishment 2, Madworld, Lost in Shadow, Lit, Dead Space Extraction, Fragile Dreams, No More Heroes 1 and 2, the Res Evil Chronicles games, Sakura Wars, Lost Winds, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Epic Mickey, de Blob, the Bit.Trip games... That's totally ignoring any first party titles, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch. With La Mulana and Retro City Rampage and Last Story coming out, the Wii has been a lot of fun!
Zack & Wiki takes my pick. Really hope Capcom would do a sequel. Wishful thinking at best.
I did play some of these games:Cave story,Boom blox(didn't really like it)Fire emblem,Wario Land shake(see boom blox),&Excite truck
