Command And Conquer 4

If Command and Conquer ever offered a hallowed formula for the RTS, EA LA may soon be accused of sacrilege. The final installment in the Tiberium Sage attacks the immortal tenets of base building and resources management, elevating in their stead the principles of immediacy; dynamism and persistence.

That’s pretty good as far as heresy goes. The headlines changes static bases are replaced with mobile crawlers that can spit out units at a moment’s notice, as well as bolster the frontline of every battle. Three distinct classes, offence, defense and support, each with a customizable selection of units plucked from the 75 strong rosters for each fraction. Players can switch between classes on the fly and even total annihilation only result in a 15 second penalty before respawning.

One of the first things I notice as my offence crawler stalks into conflict is that gunfire is color coded, indicating how effective it will be against the current target. However over an enemy and the cursor changes to a rectangle if your selected unit is its fitting opponents. The battlefield must be comprehensible on a quick scan, says producer Raj Joshi, but this isn’t a dumbing-down: it’s a shift in emphasis from micromanagement and fiddle some execution to border strategy. EA are looking into special tournaments modes. Will that be enough? Either Way, you have to respect EA’s tenacity in trying to move the series forward without leaving old fans behind.

Machinarium

As an adventure, Machinarium can’t live up to its impossible visual benchmark, but it gives it a damn good try. If you have played the Gobliiins series (presumably in an attempt to atone for sins committed in a past life) or Samorost, you will get this gist instantly. You control an adorable, nervous little robot thrown on the scrapheap. He has the ability tp pick up items, stretch and squat down, and activate things.

These simple abilities lead to a splendid range of puzzles, and in many cases, ones that just wouldn’t work in another game. Normally, it’d be frustrating to find that, say, a spanner was randomly hidden in a Venus flytrap monster, or that the Key to an elevator’s cupboard was in a service tunnel next to a totally different look.

Here, they generally work because of the exploratory style. This isn’t a game when you solve problems by looking at the screen and working out a big battle plan, but rather by poking and prodding at everything, and combining the results. This makes the game (very slow, at times, especially with the amount of retreading it makes you do) but one with lots of variety, everything from the beating the computer at 5-In-A-Row to SpaceInvaders and actively failing a challenge just to get the challenger angry.