While I watch my character walking slowly towards the sunrise at the end of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, I take a look back at the road that has brought me here. Considering that for the most part it lead through the battlefields of World War I, the journey was surprisingly rich in variety, and it entailed even some nice memories besides all the horror. Yet it has been exactly those contrasts, these emotional ups and downs, which make these sensations so intense. Its beginning seems almost a bit unreal now, but soon the story will come to an end, and I cannot remember when I had such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a computer game.
Absorbing, thrilling action in a creepy setting by using minimalist design was another attempt Richard Bayliss tried to implement into the game Darkland with the help of the SEUCK (Shoot'Em Up Construction Kit) engine. The programmer is no stranger to this type of development environment. He has his own website on which several hundreds of his games and demos for the C64 are offered. The screenshots on the itch.io website gave me reason to hope that the creative spark leaps over to him and that the result was not just another faceless blast-the-baddies game.
After three so-so games in three years, you should really think that expectations for the fourth Alien Breed would be low. I'm all the happier to report that with Tower Assault, Team 17 finally got their act together. It is the last one of the classic series, and also its pinnacle. Finally a game which can really be recommended. Why is that?
Well, it actually does address most of the shortcomings of the predecessors. Most importantly, level design differs quite fundamentally from what we've become used to in the series. Instead of a linear progression, different areas of the colony base can be accessed from a map in arbitrary fashion. They are connected through outdoor levels. These different parts of the overall base have different functions, but not only by name, but the indoor areas are then actually somewhat believable, in the sense that somebody could actually live or work there. Which concerns room layout (not as many stupid dead ends) as well as furnishing and other things lying around. Including those ripped human bodies, which may appear gratuitous at first, but actually do get one main point across – finally – this used to be a human-inhabited base!
