1672: It’s Time to Take “Simulator” Back

On a whim, I downloaded a game called F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 from retro gaming specialists Good Old Games the other day. This was the sequel to a game I used to play a whole bunch on the Atari ST, our main family computer back in the late ’80s to early ’90s — F-19 Stealth Fighter.

F-19 and F-117A are both the brainchild of Sid Meier, the legendary game designer who is most well-known for the Civilization series these days. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, though, Meier and his compatriots at MicroProse — a company which he co-founded — were specialists in the field of simulations of various kinds. And not just flight sims, either; notable early MicroProse titles included submarine simulator Silent Service and air traffic control simulation Kennedy Approach as well as the detailed but accessible jet fighter sims like F-15 Strike Eagle that the company was most well-known for.

That “accessible” part was an important part of the appeal of MicroProse games — even as a young child, I was able to pick up a joystick and happily fly a virtual F-15 or the non-existent F-19 (and its real-world counterpart the F-117A) without crashing, for the most part. (Landing was — and still is — troublesome, but it was ever thus.) And yet the games were packed with detail and options that allowed you to make the experience more realistic if you so desired — systems that could get damaged or fail in flight, more complex flight models, less forgiving physics models for landing and all manner of other goodies. In other words, they were games that both my young self and my confirmed propellerhead father could get something out of — although the latter often noted that SubLogic’s (and subsequently Microsoft’s) Flight Simulator series was considerably more “true to life” in numerous ways.

Booting up F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 (which is a fancier version of F-19 Stealth Fighter rather than a completely new game in its own right) made me realise that a full-on, proper simulation like this is something of a rarity these days. Oh, sure, we still get the odd authentic simulator like Euro Truck Simulator and Farming Simulator, but for the most part, simulators aren’t what they used to be.

And I mean that literally: the definition (or usage, at least) of the words “simulator” and “simulation” have changed over time, and branched off in a couple of directions: first they were co-opted by social game developers to describe isometric-perspective clickfest non-games like FarmVille and CityVille and, more recently, they’ve been adopted in a humorous sense by games like Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator — games that are making a joke out of the fact that they bear little to no resemblance to reality whatsoever. (A joke that some might argue has gone a little bit too far now, but that’s not really what I want to get too hung up on right now.)

An honest-to-goodness flight simulator, though? A rare sighting — along with their closely related cousins, the space flight simulator. (In the latter case, we’re usually into the realms of pure science fantasy, but good space flight sims treat their subject matter with as much respect as those games that are firmly based in the real world. See: X-Wing, Tie Fighter, FreeSpace.) And that’s a bit sad, really, because surely with the power of modern systems we could do some absolutely kick-ass flight sims these days.

Flight sims were, during the ’90s and early ’00s, showcase titles for powerful computers. Fast processors were needed to crunch the numbers for increasingly realistic flight models, and the dawn of the 3D accelerator video card age brought us texture-mapped visuals that were forever pursuing the “photo-realistic” ideal. No-one ever quite managed it, but there were more than a few games that got pretty close — and even when they didn’t, there were plenty of games that managed to suspend one’s disbelief enough through atmosphere and a feeling of authenticity to make you feel like you were really sitting in the cockpit heading off on a deadly mission into enemy territory.

F-117A is a prime example of this. Its visuals consisting entirely of flat-shaded polygonal graphics with occasional dots appearing on land and sea to give a (surprisingly convincing) feeling of speed and altitude, the game nonetheless remains somewhat terrifying thanks to its stealth mechanics. You need to fly under radars and make sure you don’t do anything that will attract attention — no firing off weapons unless you’ve reached your target; no hitting the afterburners to get where you’re going a bit quicker. The little gauge in the cockpit that reflected your visibility to enemy radar — a nod to accessibility rather than something I for a moment believe is present in a real F-117A cockpit — became something you’d glance furtively at before returning your attention to the occasional radar “blips” you’d see on the cockpit’s multi-function displays. You’d lower the nose and drop altitude still further, terrifying a few Libyan farmers as you flew past a few hundred feet above their heads. Then, when your target was in range, you’d lock on, open the bay doors, release your payload and then get the hell out of there before pursuers arrived on the scene.

I miss that sort of experience. I know I can still have it with F-117A, but it would be awesome to see what that game would look like had it been made today. I wonder if we’ll ever see a resurgence of this kind of game? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility; after all, traditional PC roleplaying games, point-and-click adventures and all manner of other genres have made successful comebacks in recent years — I think flight sims are long overdue their time in the sun.

1654: Pay Attention, Bon– Err, Remington

I felt like trying something new today, so after toying with the idea of downloading legendary military sandbox Arma III (and eventually resisting — its £35.99 price point is a little too high for me to consider taking a risk on it at the moment) I wandered over to GOG.com and took a look at a game that has caught my interest several times over the years: Sid Meier’s Covert Action.

I remember first seeing adverts for Covert Action back in multi-format games magazine Advanced Computer Entertainment (aka ACE) way back around 1990, when the game first came out. I recall being intrigued by the prospect of what looked like a fairly convincing “spy game” — something that hadn’t really been done at the time, and certainly not in the way that Covert Action chooses to do things.

Covert Action is, unlike other espionage-themed games on the market, very much a “spy simulator”. Straddling a line somewhere between a surprisingly huge number of different genres, Covert Action casts you in the role of superspy Max (or Maxine) Remington as he (or she) attempts to foil the devious plots of various bands of criminals around the world. These plots range from simple thefts all the way up to the construction of doomsday devices, but the execution remains the same: gather evidence, infiltrate facilities, intercept communications and eventually — hopefully — bring the perpetrators to justice. Or, if you’re as incompetent as me, arrest a few of them and allow the remaining criminals to happily get away with what they were planning.

Covert Action is split into a number of different components. The “main” part of the game, if you can call it that, involves moving from location to location both within cities and around the world, and choosing the best course of action. Actions always take varying amounts of time, so if you spend too long dilly-dallying around, you’ll find the criminals get one, two, three steps ahead of you before you know it. This is a game about preventing a crime before it happens rather than solving a crime that has already happened, and as such you have to go about things a little differently to how you might do in other games; you have to anticipate what your opponents’ moves might be, then react accordingly, ideally to catch them in the act and be able to arrest them in such a manner that causes the remainder of their plot to fall to pieces.

Choosing to perform various actions in the game’s locations triggers minigames. Choose to wiretap a building’s phones, for example, and you’ll be confronted with a challenging PipeMania-esque puzzle where you must reroute power away from both the phones and the alarm systems of the building. Choose to decrypt an intercepted communication from one of the perps and you’ll actually have to crack the code using your own brainpower. Opt to tail a suspect and see if they lead you anywhere interesting, and you’ll find yourself playing an oddly strategic driving game in which you order two cars around in an attempt to follow the suspect without arousing their suspicions. And choose to break in to a facility and you’ll have to actually infiltrate it yourself.

It’s this latter part of the game that tends to form the meat of most investigations — and it’s also an aspect that Meier himself was somewhat dissatisfied with, feeling that the game’s minigames weren’t tied together in a coherent enough manner. Break-ins are not the only option for gathering information, but they’re by far the most efficient and as such you’ll spend quite a lot of time doing them.

They take the form of an interesting pre-Metal Gear stealth action game in which you control Max as s/he explores a randomly generated building, opening filing cabinets and drawers and photographing all the files s/he can. You’ll also have to deploy bugs in various items of furniture in order to raise your ability to perform remote surveillance on the building, and recover incriminating evidence from safes if you want to “turn” your opponents over to your side rather than simply arresting them. Some interesting, rudimentary AI sees guards patrolling the building and looking out for unusual things — containers you neglected to close, for example. You can also trick them somewhat by knocking one of them out and then disguising yourself in their uniforms — in a nice touch, your disguise will only continue to work if you don’t allow them to look at your front or side for any length of time, leading to some comic situations as Max stares at a wall, hoping that the guard who just opened the door behind him/her doesn’t decide to come in and check the room more thoroughly.

All the while you’re investigating, the criminals are working on their plot in the background, and if you’re not quick or careful enough, they will succeed. Regardless of whether you “win” or “lose” a case, however, the game continues, and you’re evaluated on your performance, with a certain number of points being available for each mission according to who you managed to arrest, what key items you managed to confiscate and whether you actually managed to foil the plot at all.

It’s a difficult, challenging, ambitious and somewhat flawed game, but it’s a magnificent example of the creativity of game developers in the early ’90s — particularly MicroProse, who were well-known for this sort of game around that time. It’s also a game absolutely crying out for a remake — with today’s technology, it’s more than possible for someone to do the game’s grand vision even more justice than the hardware and software of 1990 would allow.

That said, Covert Action still stands up remarkably well even today, despite its dodgy AdLib sound effects and horrid 16-colour EGA graphics. If you’re looking for something a little bit different to entertain you for a while, I’d urge you to check it out.

#oneaday Day 845: Endless SPAAAAAACE

As I believe has been well-documented on this very site a number of times, I am not very good at strategy games, be they of the board- or computer-based varieties. I have trouble prioritising what I want to do, and as soon as I do decide upon a course of action, some asshole other player comes along and beats the shit out of me before I have a chance to follow through on my master plan.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided I would give Endless Space a go. I’ve been playing a bit of Starbase Orion on iOS recently and, having recently won my first game (against one Easy-level opponent) I felt I wanted to investigate the space-based 4X genre a little further.

Aside: If you, like me, constantly forget what “4X” stands for, it means “explore, expand, exploit and exterminate” and is used to describe strategy games that involve a combination of building, expansion, collecting resources and military conflict. They’re typically (though not always) turn-based in execution due to the amount of micromanagement necessary to keep an empire running smoothly, and depending on the game, victory can generally be attained in several ways. Sid Meier’s popular Civilization series is one of the best-known examples.

With me? Good. Endless Space is an upcoming space-based 4X game from French indie developer Amplitude. You can preorder the game right now and jump into an impressively-complete alpha build and, in an interesting twist on the usual development cycle, participate in the decision-making process as the game gets closer to release. I shan’t go into detail on that side of things right now (though I may in the future as it’s a very cool idea to get the community involved in development) but I will talk a little about the game itself and how I’ve found it after a few hours of taking it for a spin earlier.

Endless Space, like many other games of its type, takes place in a randomly-generated galaxy. You’re given a starting colony and a meagre supply of ships to get yourself up and running, and from there it’s all about the empire-building. Scout out new systems, send colony ships to the richest-looking planets, then build, expand and conquer until you are the undisputed ruler of the Universe. Easy enough, right?

Unlike some similar titles, Endless Space’s map is based around specific routes between star systems. (In Starbase Orion, for example, ships can move between any systems that are in range via the most direct route.) Because of this, it’s much more straightforward to figure out how to defend yourself because attacks will only be coming from certain angles. Blockade your systems that are on the front line, then figure out a pathway through your opponent’s defences that will whittle them down piece by piece. In some ways it reminded me of the excellent board-game adaptation of Blizzard’s StarCraft, which is well worth a punt if you have a few hours (and a very big table) to spare.

The basic mechanics are similar to the classic Civilization titles. Each colony under the player’s control produces food, industry, science and “dust”, which is the currency used in the Endless Space universe. Food leads to population growth. Industry is used to build things — the more industry, the quicker things are built. Science is used to research new technologies. And dust is used for all sorts of purposes — hurrying production, upgrading ships and all manner of other things. Each colony in a star system adds to that system’s pool of food, industry, dust and science (referred to in-game as “FIDS”), and each system may then use said pools to upgrade its population, contribute to the empire’s overall research progress, build ships or build improvements to that specific system. It’s simple to understand in practice, particularly if you’ve played Civilization before.

An interesting twist on the usual formula comes in the form of “hero” units, who are generated every few turns and may be hired for a fee of dust up front, then paid a salary each turn. Heroes come in two main forms: system governors and admirals. The former provide various bonuses to FIDS and morale in the system they’re assigned to, while the latter may be used to take command of a fleet of ships and make them more powerful. As they do their jobs, they level up and may be customised with various abilities to specialise them or make them better generalists. They can be shuffled around the player’s empire at will, too.

Combat, too, takes an intriguingly unconventional approach. Rather than going outright real-time such as in Sins of a Solar Empire, or almost completely hands-off as in Starbase Orion, Endless Space’s combat takes a curious “cinematic” approach. A combat encounter unfolds over a set period of real time which is divided into several phases. There are a few seconds at the beginning of combat while both fleets approach each other, then the battle progresses between long, medium and short-range phases. The player may play a “card” on each of these three phases which provides numerous special effects. Cards have categories, too, and certain categories cancel out the other player’s abilities. This gives an element of uncertainty to the combat, though the “combat preview” window, which estimates the player’s chances of victory prior to the combat unfolding, is a pleasing addition, as are the Battlestar Galactica-style cinematic combat sequences (complete with ethnic instruments) and ability to completely skip the combat scene altogether if it looks like being a complete whitewash.

I haven’t played a game through to completion yet, but I’ve been enjoying what I’ve tried so far. I don’t feel overwhelmed with things to worry about and I don’t feel I’m being “left behind” by the computer players. (I may feel differently if I get stomped on by one of them — my closest neighbour declared war on me just because I forcibly removed one of his scout ships from my border system with a fleet of destroyers.) The “hero” mechanic adds a cool sense of progression and the way the game is presented is simple, clear and easy to understand while remaining aesthetically impressive, with smoothly-animated, attractive UI elements, excellent background music and atmospheric sound effects.

If this is an alpha version, I very much look forward to seeing how the game evolves over the coming months. If you have the slightest interest in the turn-based strategy genre, I’d strongly suggest you give it a shot — and thanks to my good buddy Alex for the recommendation.

Check out the game here and preorder on Steam to get access to the alpha build.

#oneaday Day 717: Just One More Turn

I’ve been playing Civilization V. It’s now 3AM. The two facts may be somewhat related.

I’ve only been playing the Civ series since its fourth instalment, and while I’ve found it entertaining and fun, like many heavily strategic board games, I find it difficult to actually succeed at it. It’s a challenging series of games, for sure, and there are lots of things for you to focus on all at once — thankfully with the infinite time offered by turn-based games.

Civilization Revolution on consoles provided a different experience which I liked a whole lot. What we had in that game was a simplified (but not dumbed-down) Civ experience which could be played in relatively short sessions, and which was set up to encourage players to be at each others’ throats almost constantly.

And now we have Civ V. I know we’ve had Civ V for a while now, but I’ve only just started playing it thanks to a generous Christmas gift. (Thanks, Paul!) Civ V, for me, is resonating nicely, offering a pleasing middle ground somewhere between the simplicity of CivRev and the depth of Civ IV. It’s certainly a different beast from Civ IV, and those who have grown accustomed to the functions of the various buildings in IV will have to relearn everything for V. Thankfully, the game does a pretty good job of explaining what each building does, and offering enough suggestions to help you out without feeling like you’re being shunted down a specific path or letting the game “play itself”.

There seems to be a nice balance between number of players and game time, too. In Civ IV, I often found that playing a game with any more than two or three players total often meant it would stretch on into the “days long” territory, making it all the more disheartening when something went disastrously wrong in 850BC and you then spent the rest of the game playing catch-up, with no hope of winning. The game of Civ V I played tonight, however, went on for about three and a half hours. That’s not short by any means, but it’s certainly doable. A tabletop game of Arkham Horror takes three hours. And, of course, with Civ you can always save and come back to it later.

Except you can’t. Because there’s something in that game that means you can’t just leave it alone. Something deep within the coding that taps into the pleasure centres of your brain and wants you to keep playing — yes, for “just one more turn”. It’s difficult to pin down what it is — certainly it doesn’t resort to Skinner Box tricks like social games, but there’s definitely something in there giving it a particularly addictive quality. Perhaps it’s the fact that you have to come up with a long-term strategy and aim for a specific type of victory. (Cultural in the case of the game I just played, meaning my empire focused almost entirely on developing culture, and I spent the entire game hoping my neighbour to the North wouldn’t feel the need to attack me. Fortunately, he was more interested in subjugating the city-state of Singapore to pay too much attention to me.) Perhaps it’s the little countdowns showing how many turns until you complete that piece of research or build that cool building. Perhaps it’s the little mini-rewards — famous quotes when you research a tech, short movies when you build a Wonder. Or perhaps it’s just the satisfaction of seeing your empire grow and grow and grow and thinking “I made that.”

Whatever it is, I say simply DAMN YOU, SID MEIER.