Davies will save us from the aliens in outer space/

Davies, oh Davies, the aliens killed your crew/

Davies, no pressure, but humanity dies with you!

Children across Earth are singing this song. It’s a song about the one man who we all depend on: Colonel Davies. It’s been a long road, but this is it. Almost everyone is dead, and one hero remains. As a rookie he served with some of my very first XCOM operatives. Now, as a colonel, he’ll lead Earth to victory or defeat.

This is humanity’s last stand. This is XCOM Part 4.

Danger! There be spoilers ahead! This article is about the final missions of XCOM, and as a result is going to contain more spoilers than my last XCOM articles. 

Start with Part 1 here

If you recall, the last article was pretty much me getting my ass handed to me by the aliens. Most of my best soldiers were killed, but Davies, a British operative who has been around almost since the beginning, has learned he has psychic powers.

XCOM has extended satellite coverage to the United States, Canada, Mexico, Egypt, Nigeria, England, Russia, France, Japan, India, and Australia and all eleven countries are heavily funding us now. I use the money to make sure every member of  the unit has a plasma weapon, the best kind available. I buy new armor. Now my sniper has a jet pack, my assault has a cloaking device, and my other assault (that’s Davies) has a psi suit that increases his psychic abilities.

Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Germany, and China have left the XCOM project. If I save the world I’ll be sure to call up the leaders of each country and gloat. If I fail, well, we’ll all be dead anyway.

The new team’s first assignment is handed in, and it’s bad news. A terror mission in Bangalore. Aliens are on the attack and citizen’s lives are on the line. Davies gives the team an inspiring speech.

“Everyone I’ve ever known is dead. Everyone I’ve served with has died a gruesome death, and now I’m about to serve with you people. Wait… what was I talking about again?”

Inspiring!

My sniper climbs up to the roof of a building to get a better view of the area.

Here’s what he sees.

Those things have heavy armor and can shoot twice in one turn. My sniper climbs back down the building with tail firmly between his legs.

He and two other soldiers convene at the bottom of the building with the plan of climbing back up and shooting a volley at the robot together. Meanwhile the others are running around shooting easier aliens and saving civilians. As the team of three chit chat about how best to take down the robot, a large shadow appears overhead. They look up and see this.

“You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”

Then this.

“You ever get the feeling you’re being burned alive?”

I honestly didn’t think the robot would chase them down like that. No one dies but they’re all pretty horribly wounded. That’s when Davies shows up, right on queue, right behind the robot and kicks ass as per usual.

Davies knows the best way to win a fight is to shoot your enemy in the back when he’s not looking.

And the mission is over.

That went… really, really well. I know. I’m scared too.

We killed ten aliens (excellent), saved 13/18 civilians (good), and lost 0 XCOM operatives (excellent).

Actually, with the new equipment and with Davies at the helm the group performs brilliantly in every operation without losing anyone. The old team of elites was killed by a psychic alien that we’ve never seen before. I consider this next missions as training to take that alien on once again.

Here’s a montage to illustrate my point. If you have Eye of the Tiger available play it now. Otherwise just hum it until your roommate starts giving you dirty looks.

It’s the eye of the tiger

It’s the thrill of the fight

Rising up to the challenge of our rival

Something something something something something something something something

Something something eye of the tiger!

If I could end the montage with the whole team high fiving I would, but you get the picture. The point is things are going well, and before I know it, it’s time for the final mission. You may have noticed at the end of the montage my sniper blowing off the head of the psychic alien that killed my entire team not long ago. The new team killed him without losing a single operative. The psychic alien was holding a device that would allow us to locate the mother ship. The only problem is we need someone with psychic abilities to operate it.

Once again, enter Davies right on cue.

He uses the alien device and finds the mother ship, then leads the charge inside. This is it. His final mission.

The final ship has you fighting every alien type in the game, and once again the team is flawless. We fight our way through the ship with no problems at all. And then we get to the alien leader. Disappointingly, it’s just another one of those tall psychic guys that we’ve already encountered before (I was hoping their leader would be something new and terrifying). The way things have gone, this should be an extremely easy final battle.

My assault guy flanks to the right. Davies takes the left.

And runs into another psychic alien. It mind controls him. The aliens have Davies!

Davies shoots the medic dead! No! My assault guy runs into a third psychic alien! It mind controls him! Crap! He shoots my sniper dead! Oh no! OH NO! The first psychic alien mind controls my heavy gunner! WOW, THIS REALLY COULDN’T BE GOING ANY WORSE!

My heavy gunner shoots my other heavy gunner dead. Three dead and three under the alien’s control and the mission ends. I’ve failed.

Wow… that was… horrible.

I assume I’ll have to train a whole other team up and try again (I’m not sure I’ve actually mentioned this, but I’ve been playing on ironman mode, which means I only get one save file that autosaves over itself automatically). But the game cuts me some serious slack. It starts me at the beginning of the mission with Davies and the rest back to life.

The team marches back through the ship and snipes the alien boss on the first turn, killing him instantly. The good news is the world is saved. The bad news is it was somewhat anticlimactic.

No, no, don’t thank me. Sure, I’m the commander in charge of the organization that just saved the world. But the real hero is Davies, the man on the front line, and the men and women he served next to. They’re the ones who should get all of the praise.

And me. Mostly me.

I’m Robert Green. For more of this sort of thing, go to RobertGreenStories.com

I have a plan.

I’m gambling everything on a single strategy. If it works XCOM could last a while longer. If it fails the entire human race will become extinct.

This is XCOM Part 3.

You’re reading part 3 of a game journal for XCOM. Start with Part 1 here. 

The strategy is this: using the vast majority of my money and resources not on weapons or ships or anything used to fight a war. Instead, I plan to build a satellite nexus with a satellite station. This will allow me to build six satellites to scan six different XCOM supporting nations for UFO activity. Putting satellites over countries makes them feel like XCOM is working for them and they start donating a lot more money, scientists  and engineers to the cause. I’m spending money to make money, but weapon production will be on hold for a while. If I get these things built I should have a huge donation for next month and the months to come that I’ll use to play a grueling game of catch up.

A UFO has landed in England. Typically you shoot UFOs down and all you have to do is clean up whatever aliens are still alive. But sometimes… sometimes… a UFO touches down on its own, meaning every alien aboard is still alive and all of their technology is undamaged and if you can take over the UFO it’s all yours. Perfect! So all we have to do is fight our way through an army of aliens and we collect a huge cache of valuable UFO technology.

No problem. We can do anything. My new team of fresh faced recruits has already defeated a wave of chrysalis and taken over an entire alien base. There’s nothing they can’t do!

Except every member of my regular team is horribly wounded from said alien base attack. So who will I send to fight the army of aliens defending the landed UFO?

Send in the rookies!

Oops! None of the rookies came back alive. That was… expensive. The team barely made it to the UFO before they were all shot to pieces by mutons. Now I have to recruit more rookies and they’re not cheap.

Let us never speak of that again.

Lately most of my money and resources has been going to the production of a satellite nexus. It will allow me to put up for additional satellites, which means four additional nations I can watch over for alien activity, which means four additional nations that will be happy with XCOM and give us more money.

The nexus is soon complete and I can place my satellites. Giving a country satellite coverage instantly makes them happier with XCOM. This is crucial, because unhappy countries pull their XCOM funding, and too much of that leads to the end of the world. I currently have four satellites, so this is exciting times as I’ll be doubling my coverage. The United States, Russia, Nigeria, and China all have one. So now the unhappy decision of who gets the satellites.

Well, England is now extremely pissed with XCOM because they still have a landed UFO and five dead rookies on their soil. So England gets one. I’m just now beginning to realize that giving a bunch of satellites to one continent is probably better than giving a few to each continent because you get better bonus’ (I’m slow for the leader of an organization tasked with saving the world). I give France one so that I have three of the four Eurpoean nations. I’ll never get Germany  because they left XCOM, but now Europe alone will give me an assload (six) scientists a month. That means faster research. The other two go to Japan and India because they’ll give me more engineers to build equipment faster.

Now everyone is pretty happy with me again, so all I have to do is not mess that up. The month ends and the council overseeing the XCOM project gives me an A, the first time in a long time I’ve gotten a high score. All nations are happy with me and we took down an alien base. Luckily, no one cares about the six people I sent to die in England.

Speaking of that incident… My team of elites, my A Team, (but without Mr. T) recovers and I send them to England to do what the rookies couldn’t. Luckily the UFO has stayed parked in the same place for a week now and it’s time to show the aliens that we don’t appreciate that sort of thing.

They do the deed and only lose one person. Very good. They also manage to capture a muton. This is important because alien’s weapons fragment when they die, but if you capture the alien you capture the weapon. We now have a plasma rifle in our possession, which is better than the laser rifles we use now.

Once again the veterans do a good job, but once again most of them are wounded and one of them dies. Now we’ve got a situation in Brazil and the only people available to take care of it are… rookies. They’re going to a terror mission, meaning aliens are actively killing human civilians in the streets and it’s up to the rookies to stop them.

“Alright people. I’m not going to lie to you. The last batch of rookies was horribly slaughtered for their trouble. But this group… I’ve got a good feeling about this group!”

Okay… That didn’t go well. All six of them are killed along with the entire population of Rio De Janeiro . I hope I don’t get blamed for this.

Let’s not speak of that again either.

Oh good, my A Team has healed again. They also have a terror mission. This time it’s in Toronto, Canada. They perform brilliantly, as usual. They save 14/18 civilians in the area and again, only lose one soldier.

Is anyone else sensing a pattern here? A Team goes in and kicks ass but loses someone and gets wounded. Rookies go in while A Team is wounded. Rookies are completely wiped out. This is a bad pattern. My experienced soldiers are doing well but are slowly dying and I’m not replacing them because rookies keep dying.

Brazil joins Argentina, South Africa, and Germany on the list of nations to defect from XCOM.

I just need XCOM to survive the month. It’s late September and in a few days another two satellites will be ready to go. At the end of the month I’ll get a lot of donations thanks to all of the satellite coverage and then I can really start building the technology we need to turn things around.

I just need to survive the month.

We shoot down a UFO, but this one is important. We needed a special tracker in order to find it, so the aliens must be hiding something interesting onboard. We’re told to expect heavy resistance. I send the A Team. These are the guys that stormed an alien base and fought off a horde of chrysalids. They’ve never failed me.

The mission goes poorly but it looks like we’ll succeed. Three members, half the starting team, are dead, but they reach the center of the secret UFO so it seems like victory is certain.

Wait… what’s that?

The commander of the ship is an alien with mind control powers like we’ve never seen. It takes control of my sniper and orders her to shoot one of her friends dead at point blank range. He then kills her by destroying her mind. The last guy on my squad charges in out of desperation, but his mind is taken too and well, here’s what happens.

That was the A team, or at least most of it. Looking back, they’re not as elite as I remembered.

I’ve failed to train any new rookies into elite soldiers.

I’ve failed to keep the elite soldiers I already had alive.

I’ve failed to discover what secret the aliens were hiding aboard that UFO.

China withdraws from XCOM.

I put a satellite over Mexico and Canada. Now every country in XCOM has coverage, but it may be too late.

At the end of the month I’m given a D for my efforts, along with 1,200 credits (that’s a lot). This is it. I made a lot of sacrifices to get this payday and now it’s time to capitalize. Along with the money I have one ace up my sleeve.

Davies, the British soldier who captured our very first alien back at the start of the war, is still alive. He was a rookie then, but now he’s my highest ranking XCOM operative, and he missed the A Team massacre because he was being tested for psychic abilities. It turns out he has psychic abilities. He’s also a major, the second highest rank possible. I higher over ten rookies with the new influx of cash, and it’ll be up to Davies to lead them and humanity to glory.

This last month was our darkest hour. If we are to survive, the next month  must be our finest.

RobertGreenStories.com

You kick in the door and it swings open into one of the guards. He falls to the floor and drops his knife. You pick it up as another guard turns the corner. You toss the knife into his head and he drops his baseball bat. The first guard tries to crawl away and you crush his head between the bat and the floor.

This is a review of Hotline Miami.

Hotline Miami is a PC indie game by Dennaton Games. It’s one of those games that’s hard to pigeon hole into any one genre. Its been compared to stealth games, but you can’t sneak up behind guards (they’ll just turn around and murder you), so you have to quickly run up and bludgeon them before they have time to turn around. You have to be fast. The game’s also been compared to Grant Theft Auto, but Hotline Miami doesn’t have the open world sandbox that made Grand Theft Auto nor does it have Rockstar’s trademark humor.

It’s a twitch based action game with strategy. It’s a puzzle game that requires fast reflexes. Each enemy can kill you in one hit, so carefully moving from room to room plotting your next action is essential. Guns make noise so it’s often best to kill with melee. The game is unforgiving; any bullet or melee attack kills you instantly. It reminds me of Super Meat Boy more than anything else. Both games have short levels where it’s very easy to die. Both games expect you to die a lot. Both games require fast reflexes and some thought.

“I swear! They were like that when I got here!”

This is the kind of game where you’ll die repeatedly and part of the experience is learning from your mistakes. Dying means just starting the building floor you were on over. You’ll die frequently, but levels are short and reload times instant so it’s rarely frustrating. If you’re the type that enjoys difficult games with a lot of repetition, you’ll like Hotline Miami as long as the pixelated gore doesn’t bother you. If the likes of Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls make you want to throw you keyboard/controller out the window, Hotline Miami probably won’t be an exception.

“I swear! They were like that when I got here!”

This game is intense. Before you go into each room you’re going to stop and come up with a plan. You’re going to play out exactly what’s going to happen in your head. “I’ll kick the door in, throw my crowbar at the guy with the gun, punch out the guy with the knife, pick up the knife, and murder them both before they get up and process what’s happening to them.” Then you kick open the door and get shot to pieces. Time to start over. Clearing each section is so exciting because any one thing can kill you in one hit. The odds truly are stacked against you all the time.

You’ll be seeing the phrase ‘You’re dead!’ a lot. Think of death as a learning experience.

The shear stupidity of the computer guards definitely helps. The AI tends to stay in one place. Some guards don’t move at all, whereas others move in preset patterns The ones that move on their own randomly stroll about, typically staying in one room. Shooting a gun causes a flood of guards to come running toward you. Overall I liked the predictability of the AI because it allows you to plan your moves and adds a very distinct puzzle feel to the whole game. It allows you to plan your attack rather than react to whatever the guards are doing.

Hotline Miami typically does the same thing over and over. You go to a new building and the level ends when everybody dies. But it does this extremely well and the level design is good enough to keep the challenge increasing. Actually, I only ever thought the game stumbled when it tried to break from its own formula. There’s one level where the game actually does try to be a stealth game, and what a spectacular failure it is. I won’t give it away, but the object of this particular level is to escape and you can’t kill anyone. It’s pretty boring, and proof that Hotline Miami is more about reflexes and strategic kills than about stealth.

You’ll be seeing the phrase ‘You’re dead!’ a lot. Think of death as a learning experience.

The game also has boss battles, and they aren’t very good. They remind me of the boss battles in Deus Ex: Human Revolution in that they aren’t fun and don’t at all represent what’s good about the game. But, like Deus Ex, there aren’t many of them and they aren’t particularly difficult.

Never bring a lead pipe to an assault rifle fight.

It may surprise you to hear that Hotline Miami actually has a story. The story is dreamy and vague. It’s the kind of thing where some people will play it and think the plot is brilliant, and some will think it’s just being vague to hide its shallowness. I’m somewhere in between, believing that the game’s story doesn’t take anything away, but it also doesn’t really add anything for me. The game would be just as good as a series of levels with no continuity. You play as a guy who gets mysterious phone calls telling him to go kill people. He does it but doesn’t seem to know why. Things only get weirder. I think it might be playing with the theme of mindless violence in video games, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

What Hotline Miami does have is style. It takes place in the 80’s and that influence is all over the game. The sound effects and gory animations make each kill exciting. If you have a problem with fiction making murder seem stylish, you’re going to have a big problem with this game. The music is excellent and can be very creepy. The fact that you wear a different animal mask to each mass killing is all the more disturbing (the masks each have different special abilities).

I beat the game in five hours. The game is $9.99, so that seems worth it to me. Again, you’ve probably never played anything quite like this before because it is very unique and fun while it lasts. There’s arguably replay value in returning to previous levels and trying to get a higher score, if you’re into that sort of thing (I’m not). Higher scores unlock new masks that give special abilities and new weapons.

As long as the gore doesn’t bother you I think you should give this a try. There’s not really anything else quite like it and the price is pretty reasonable, even for a short game. Hotline Miami will get people talking because of its shock value. Also because it’s just really good.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

I’ve built up an elite team of operatives, and it’s time to test them. I’m sending my six best into a hidden alien fortress in the countryside of China. This mission is going to test us. This mission is going to decide where we are in this war. All of my best soldiers are on this mission. All of my eggs are in this basket. This is XCOM: Part 2.

Read Part 1

The inside of the alien base is… weird. And green.

It’s quiet. Then it gets very, very loud.

We run into a large squad of mutons and very little cover. A huge firefight ensues as lasers and screaming fill the room. And just like that it’s quiet again. There’s a tink tink tink sound, the sound of metal on metal. A grenade bouncing on the floor near the XCOM soldiers. Everyone holds their breath and closes their eyes. A loud explosion and two XCOM soldiers are dead. One was a squaddie (low rank), so who cares. The other was a corporal.

Once again lasers and screams fill the room. All of the mutons are dead. We’ve lost 4 out of 6 soldiers. Not bad if we play the rest of this well. Everyone is wounded, but they pick their battered carcasses up and desperately continue through the base.

They find the base’s leader all alone. He appears to be a slightly larger version of the sectoids, the small aliens that are easy to beat up. My guys laugh at him and shoot him and laugh again. That was easy.

But the mission doesn’t end. We’d been ordered to clear the base of hostiles, so there must be aliens alive and well somewhere on the base. Fine, looks like we’ll have to backtrack to find them. How anticlimactic.

Embarrassed, we stumble through the dark corridors for a while, retracing our steps and looking down paths we’ve never been. It’s boring, and when I get bored, I get careless. I got careless.

I ran Taylor, the Aussie sniper, into a dark corridor by herself. Taylor finds herself surrounded by crysalids. People who play XCOM know that stumbling into a group of three crysalids at point blank range at the end of your turn is pretty much worst case scenario. Crysalids don’t have guns. They bite. When they bite, you turn into a zombie for a few turns. That’s not even the bad part. After a few turns a new crysalid eats its way out of the victim’s body and now you have to deal with that one too. That’s the bad part.

Taylor is surrounded and picked apart by the crysalids as everyone looks on in horror. The Australian zombie gets up and drags herself across the metal floor towards her former allies. Now there’s three crysalids, three XCOM soldiers, and one zombie. The bad guys outnumber us.

That makes three crysalids, two XCOM soldiers, and two zombies. We’ve got Braun, the assault man, and we have the last of the XCOM originals, Schneider. Both are from Germany. Germany quit the XCOM project months ago, and I”m sure these two are wishing they’d done the same.

They fall back and shoot. They kill two of the crysalids by some miracle, but it’s not good enough. A new, Australian crysalid jumps out of Taylor’s body. Braun and Schneider keep shooting, keep retreating, but they can’t keep this up forever.

They kill another crysalid, but a new crysalid eats out of the medic’s body.

Three crysalids, two XCOM soldiers.

Braun is ripped to pieces.

Three crysalids. One XCOM soldier. One zombie.

Three crysalids. Two zombies.

MISSION FAILED.

And what a spectacular failure it was! Ninth inning, two outs, two strikes, and XCOM throws a stinker across the plate. Now the whole team has been eaten by aliens (that’s where the baseball analogy kind of breaks down). Everybody died. I spend a moment picking my jaw off the floor. Everything had gone so well, and then it went so horribly wrong.

So I get a new team of fresh faced rookies who have no idea what they’re in for. They’re gonna have to learn quick. The new recruits are sent on their first mission before they have time to unpack their bags. Aliens in Argentina have been abducting people so XCOM is going in to take the aliens out. This is a must win situation. Several countries around the world are toying with the idea of pulling XCOM funding. Argentina is one of them. A solid victory here will go a long way in calming people’s fears so they continue to give this program money. A loss here would mean we have to spend more money to hire more rookies that are too inexperienced to get the job done anyway.

I send the rookies out and hope for the best. The stakes are high and expectations are low.

They perform brilliantly. Most of them are wounded and nearly killed, but not a single one of them dies. All six of them are promoted. We’ve gotten a little scrap of momentum as I begin to have faith that maybe hope for this planet isn’t lost after all.

There’s no room for mistakes.

Well, that’s when I make a mistake. And it’s a doozy!

When I was hiring new rookies, it didn’t occur to me that if a bunch of them got wounded, I’d need several extras to cover for them. I only have four soldiers available when a terror mission comes up. A terror mission is when the aliens attack a city. A CITY! As in I really, really, really need to be ready to defend and it’s a disaster that I only have four guys. The attack is in Canada, and Canada already has a problem with XCOM because we haven’t been protecting them much lately. Again, a loss here likely means they’ll pull funding. Another must win for the new recruits, but this one is going to be harder. Terror missions have civilians everywhere, and the aliens simply run around killing them. We have to find the civilians first and rescue as many as possible. We get to Canada and here’s what we see.

That’s seven crysalids. Let me say that again. That’s seven crysalids. Here it is in all caps: SEVEN CRYSALIDS! Seven crysalids, four XCOM soldiers, and a hell of a lot of defenseless civilians ready to be murdered and turned into more crysalids. One big disaster. Here’s how we react.

There’s no problem a grenade can’t fix… Except maybe a world shortage of grenades.

And this.

And rockets! Rockets cure all! Mwuahahaha!

And this.

And, oh wait, that’s just an XCOM soldier getting murdered. Ignore that.

We throw our grenades and shoot our rockets at the big clump of crysalids, but they keep coming. Two XCOM soldiers are turned into zombies. Only two left, and boy I wish I was smart enough to have two extra soldiers on this mission.

The two zombies of XCOM soldiers are mowed down with laser and machine gun before they even have time to transform to crysalids. Yes!

The two remaining XCOM soldiers do the impossible. My team of elites couldn’t handle three crysalids. My team of rookies just handled seven. The rest of the team heals up, and it’s time to return to that base. Clearly, we have yet another must win. If everyone dies again it’s going to cost time and money to replace them again, and I’ll lose faith in my own abilities to lead  the team.

The new recruits have proven they’ve got guts. Now let’s hope the aliens don’t scatter them across the floor.

The obligatory badass entrance ruined by the sniper nearly falling on his butt.

The new team encounters a huge squad of mutons. They get through it without loosing anyone. Outstanding!

We get to the boss without a single casualty. This is going far too well.

They’re working together and moving slow. They’re doing everything right. It’s going far too well.

They’ve encountered mutons and even crysalids and haven’t lost anyone. It’s going far too well.

We get to the boss, but this time I’m determined to capture him. The way I see it, he was a pushover last time so capturing him alive will be easy. Things stop going well.

Remember Davies? He was a rookie who proved himself by capturing XCOM’s first alien prisoner. Well, now he’s a lieutenant and he’s going to assist in capturing the sectoid commander. Davies doesn’t have a arc thrower, the item used for capturing, but he’ll move up one flank while a rookie with an arc thrower moves up the other. Another guy goes up the middle just to dance around cover and be a distraction for the sectoid commander. My sniper is cleverly placed on a raised platform where he can see EVERYONE.

My sniper shoots the rookie in the brain. Wait… what?

The sectoid commander has mind control powers, something I hadn’t seen before because I killed him so fast. He’s taken over my sniper, who just killed the only guy with an arc thrower. So, yeah, looks like we’re not capturing the sectoid commander after all. The sniper takes a shot at Davies as he closes in on the commander. The sniper misses.

The sectoid commander shoots Davies in the chest, but he survives just barely. Davies returns fire, and once again proves what he’s got by killing the sectoid commander in one volley. My sniper snaps out of it and apologizes for murdering a rookie. Everyone shrugs.

This time the mission ends. The new team has braved the crysalids and battled through the base and lived to tell about it. They’re the future of XCOM, and they’re due for a terribly defeat.

To be continued.

RobertGreenStories.com

Aliens have invaded. Humanity’s only hope is with XCOM, a group of the world’s best soldiers funded by nations across the globe. Our single mission is to fight off the alien threat.

Like most government institutions, the XCOM project is depressingly underfunded. We’re trying to save the world on a budget, and the eyes of humanity are upon us. Worst of all they’ve foolishly put me in charge.

This is a story of desperate survival, global warfare, and maybe… just maybe… the end of the world. This is XCOM.

We’ve encountered the aliens a couple of times. The XCOM project started out well. Our base was set in the United States, but we had an additional satellite over China searching for UFOs.

After one month of skirmishing with the aliens, the council overseeing XCOM give me an A for my work so far. I’ve minimized casualties and trained an elite squad of soldiers capable of beating back the alien threat. Let’s meet the team.

“Um, can we take it again? Jordan was picking his nose.”

Schneider: Heavy, meaning she carries a rocket launcher. She hails from Germany. She’s a squadie, only one rank above rookie. She’s a loose cannon but she gets the job done.

Jordan: He’s an Assault man. First to enter a mission and last to leave. Jordan is a brave American who’s been with XCOM since day one a month ago. He and the others are all corporals, one rank above squaddie, but Jordan is always the guy to lead the team into battle.

Harrison: He’s a Support guy from Canada. He’s the last to enter a mission and first to leave. As the reasonable one of the group, he likes to stay in the back.

Martinez: Another Heavy, this one from Argentina. He has a lot of pride in Argentina and humanity in general. He wants to make his country proud.

Things have been proceeding normally for the first month, but then we get an unexpected call from the top dogs of XCOM. Apparently some idiot general in India got his unit killed and now he needs us to rescue him. The leaders of XCOM are under the impression that if this general dies it’ll spread panic throughout India, so now my team has to risk their lives just to save this one guy. It’s like Saving Private Ryan but with more lasers.

We find the general in the rubble of a collapsed bridge. The aliens are on the other side doing their best to kill us.

Harrison demonstrating the elite standards of XCOM by completely missing his target.

Jordan: CHARGE!!!

Jordan rushes down and covers the idiot general while he runs for it. An alien on the other side of the bridge fires a laser into Jordan’s chest, nearly killing him. He has one hit point left and he’s pinned behind a car.  The idiot general gets on the dropship so now we just have to mop up the rest of the aliens. Mop them up… with bullets.

One of the aliens on the other side goes into overwatch, meaning he’ll automatically shoot if someone enters his field of vision. Martinez enters his field of vision.

He’s trying to help Jordan out. Martinez is a Heavy. He has a rocket launcher. We’re having trouble hitting the aliens on the other side, and Martinez thinks if only he could get in closer he could blow them all to hell. He runs for the car that Jordan’s hiding behind.

He doesn’t make it. One of the aliens shoots Martinez three times with his laser gun. Martinez dies right next to Jordan, who’s on the brink of death as well.

Schneider sees the chaos from the cliff above and panics. Here’s the thing about XCOM soldiers… when they panic, they really panic. She goes crazy and tries to shoot Harrison in the face at close range. By some miracle she misses and Harrison begs her to pull it together. She does, but the aliens on the other side of the rubble are still shooting at us and Jordan is still stuck next to Martinez’s corpse in the pit below.

Harrison: You tried to shoot me!

Schneider (voice just above a whisper): Hey, I get the job done.

She squeezes the trigger and shoots one of the aliens in the head. There’s only one left.

Jordan: CHARGE!!!

He charges up the cliff straight at the last remaining alien. He charges right up to the alien’s face and fires. If he misses or doesn’t get the kill, the alien will shoot back at point blank and finish the wounded Jordan off.

Jordan’s shot hits its mark and the final alien’s head is blown to pieces.

Mission accomplished, but Martinez was KIA. It was the first time XCOM lost anyone with a rank above squaddie. He was a good soldier, but we have to move on. Schneider is promoted to corporal. She takes the place of Martinez as top Heavy.

Harrison: You’re tried to kill me! You’re a ticking time bomb! You’re out of control!

Schneider (voice just above a whisper): I get results.

They continue to go on missions together. It’s awkward.

As time goes on, a new recruit from Australia begins to make a name for herself. She’s a sniper named Taylor. Two floaters, mechanical flying aliens with attitudes, pin Schneider in a parked train. Schneider had been working her way through the train when the floaters shot through one of the walls and attacked.

They have jetpacks yet they still want to take the train. Now that’s lazy.

Harrison and Jordan try to save her but can’t get close enough thanks to some bogeys on the other side of the train taking shots at their flank.

Harrison’s still missing, but at least now he’s missing with a neat laser rifle.

Enter Taylor, a young Australian squaddie with no reputation at all.

Taylor: Leave it to me, mate. I used to snipe dingoes in the bush all the live long day.

Harrison: What’d she just say?

Taylor snipes one of the floaters through a window of the train so Schneider could take out the other one. Taylor immediately joined my A list squad. She’s a young up and comer to watch out for.

One of my planes shoots down an actual UFO. I need to send a ground team in fast to clean up any surviving aliens and pick the ship clean of technology.

The scientists over at XCOM have been pressuring me to pressure my team into bringing an alien back alive. I decide that now is the time to attempt this arguably stupid idea. My egghead scientists propose we use something called the arc thrower, a little wand that shoots a stunning electrical pulse at very close range. The need to get in close makes it exceptionally dangerous. Naturally, I hand the arc thrower to a rookie and tell him to prove himself or die trying.

To my surprise, he actually does. While the aliens are locked in a firefight with the rest of the squad, he sneaks up on a thin man, an alien in a human disguise, and stuns hims for capture.

You say his chance of capturing the alien is 70 percent. I say is chance of the alien turning around and shooting him in the throat is 30 percent.

Harrison: Good job, rookie.

Davies (the rookie): Could you learn my name now? I took the time to learn yours.

Harrison: Sure thing, new guy.

As they’re standing there, a shot is fired into the group of XCOM operatives. One of them dies.

In a movie, this is where the rookie dies and no one cares. This isn’t a movie. A streak of green light cuts across the sky, and Harrison falls to the ground with a mortal wound. Unless someone uses a med pack on him in three turns he’ll die, and as the medic he’s the only one with a med pack. He dies.

Taylor whirls around and finds the killer, a floater flying just over the crashed UFO we’d been looking for.

Taylor: Crikey that was a ripping shot! Whadyasay I snipe this jumbuck shagger right in the donger?

Harrison (last words): Huh?

Taylor takes the floater out in epic fashion.

“Lasers?! How’d you know my one weakness?”

We continue the mission, but Harrison is dead and never coming back. He was the highest ranking member of XCOM. We needed him. Now Jordan is the highest ranking member. Both he and Harrison have been with the project since the beginning.

Before Jordan has time to grieve the mutons show up.

I hope they come in peace.

There’s a shootout in the trees. We can see the crashed UFO, but it seems so far away.

Jordan: CHARGE!

Jordan heads up the front, as usual. He moves right next to one of the mutons and blows his head off. Schneider fires a rocket into one of the trees. The muton taking cover behind it is engulfed in flame and dies. There’s only one left.

Davies the rookie attempts another flank maneuver that worked so well in capturing the thin man. He moves from tree to tree and gets in behind the last muton. He takes his shot.

He misses.

The muton attacks back, but not at the rookie. Instead, he throws a grenade at Jordan.

Jordan is blown apart.

We lost our two best guys.

The rookie misses again.

Taylor the sniping Aussie sends a bullet right between the last muton’s eyes. The other soldiers get aboard the UFO and secure it without too many issues.

Mission accomplished, but at a terrible cost.

The aliens have increased their attacks. I order two new satellites so we can scan and protect more of Earth, but it’s not enough. Supporting countries can encourage them to keep funding XCOM, but with so many attacks across the globe I can’t make everyone happy. I install the satellites over Russia and Nigeria. Russia because they’re contributing more money to XCOM than any country accept the United States. Nigera because they contribute a lot and I want to get a foothold on another continent.

The month ends and I get a report from the council overseeing XCOM. Germany and South Africa have grown fed up with a lack of support from the XCOM project. They’ve chosen to withdrawn their funding and have officially left. After her home country of Germany leaves XCOM Schneider continues to do missions for us. It’s awkward. The council gives me a C for the month. We’re slipping up, but I think I have a way to turn things around.

We’ve located an alien base on the surface of Earth. I’m ordering my best team to attack it head on. If this goes well XCOM will be back on track. If the mission fails we could spiral into chaos.

To be continued

I’m Robert Green, a novelist who enjoys writing about video games in his free time. For more of my stuff check out RobertGreenStories.com.

This is Part 2 of my game journal for FTL: Faster Than Light. Read Part 1 Here.

One of our crew members is dead and it’s my fault.

This is Faster than Light: Part 2.

Entry 8

It was a routine mission.We’d just bought a transporter to allow us to teleport onto enemy ships. This seemed quite stylish to me so I was eager to try it out.

Naturally, we sent Sem to be the first member of the newly formed boarding party. Who is Sem? He’s a human crew member so valuable to me that I forgot to mention him in my last few journal entries even though he’s been with us for quite some time now. He’s former Federation. We found him at a base and he was eager to join up and kill some rebels. Then I forgot about him for a while.

Poor, poor Sem. We encounter a rebel drone and I had what I thought was an ingenious idea. Drones don’t have a crew, so if I teleported even just one person over there he’d be able to attack the drone’s systems with no trouble. Sem got in the transport and waited to be beamed.

“Sorry I’ve been ignoring you, Sem. I’ll get to know you better when you get back.”

They’d be the last words I’d ever say to him.

I’d gotten too excited about the transporter. I hadn’t thought things through. Sem got to the drone to discover something not shocking at all. The drone didn’t have any air in it. Why should it? It didn’t have a crew. Sem got to the drone and immediately suffocated rather anticlimactically. The transporter has a cooldown time so we couldn’t beam him back. There was nothing we could do but watch him die and apologize profusely.

We ended up taking the drone out pretty easily making the whole mission all the more pointless.

He died to teach us all a valuable lesson about oxygen.

Entry 9

Another of my crew is dead. I’ll miss Sem, but I barely knew him. This one is far more personal.

We tracked a distress beacon in the hopes of collecting a reward for helping someone. It was a trap. A mantis pirate ship was waiting on the other side of the jump. They beamed two of their soldiers aboard the bridge. My wife, Lizzie, was there all alone. They ate her alive.

The med bay was hit by a missile and taken offline. There was never any way to save her. Zerimar was in the med bay trying to make repairs when the mantis ate through the door and found him. They ripped him apart. Another enemy missile slammed into the hull. We had to cut life support to our own ship just to keep the shields and weapons online. Oxygen was running out.

I had to get the mantis off my ship or die trying. I ordered the rest of the crew to follow me to avenge the others. Soda, Zemu, and I attacked the mantis head on in an all-out melee aboard my broken ship.

Soda was the first to die.

The mantis were next.

The mantis ship teleported away. I never got my vengeance for what they did to us.

Xemu and I are the only crew members left, and the ship will fall apart if anything hits it.

At least it can’t get worse, right?

Battered and beaten, we jumped to sector 7.

A lucky store found early on allowed us to repair about half the damage to the ship. We limped through sector 7 just barely.

Entry 10

This is Xemu. The captain is dead. It was horrible.

If anyone gets this message, please send help. I’m not going to last much longer out here.

We finally got to sector 8, home sector of the rebel mother ship. The captain and I must have been crazy to think we could take it on by ourselves.

Things seemed to be going well. We entered sector 8 with the hull in pretty good shape. We were on our way to the mother ship when a rebel fighter cut us off. It was armed to the teeth with shields to match. We’d never faced anything like that before. We just weren’t ready.

I’d never seen so many missiles in one place before. One of the missiles punched a hole through the bridge. I was on the bridge. The oxygen in the room was sucked out and I had to flee. Unless someone got the pilot system back online, we couldn’t dodge or jump out of there. To give us more to worry about, a missile blew out the life support and the rebels teleported two soldiers aboard our ship who attacked the captain in the weapon system.

The captain tried to run. A missile hurled into the room and wounded both rebels. The captain didn’t make it.

I’m currently on the bridge trying to repair the pilot system so I can jump out of here. The two rebel soldiers are still on board. I’m running out of time. I’m going to end this entry now. It’s going to take a miracle to survive this.

Xemu reevaluates his career path.

Zemu never made it. Some say he suffocated as he tried to repair the bridge. Others say the rebels on the ship found and executed him. All that’s known for sure is that the story of the Cowboy met a tragic end among the stars.

RobertGreenStories.com

Captain’s log. Star date 10022012.

I’ve been playing a lot of Faster than Light, but I still suck at it. The rebels have completely destroyed my beloved Federation. I’ve fled on my ship, the Cowboy, named in honor of the 20 Century Dallas Cowboys football team. I’m with my wife, Lizzie, and a man named after our dog, Soda. This will be a long journey through space with the wife. Hopefully someone brought a pack of cards.

We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the rebel fleet as we upgrade our ship and destroy their flagship in Sector 8. As far as I know, my ship and my crew of three are all that’s left of the Federation. The war is essentially over, but we won’t give up. This is a story of uncontrollable fires, screaming in space, and dead loved ones.

This is FTL: Faster than Light.

Entry 1

On the very first jump we encountered a rebel fighter.

Everyone took their battle stations: Lizzie as pilot, me as gunner, and Soda on the shields. We were in a nebula, meaning our sensors didn’t work. We couldn’t even see the inside of our own ship. An electrical storm broke out as lightning bombarded our shields. We targeted and disabled the enemy’s weapon systems with our burst laser and won an easy victory. After a short battle we received a message from their captain: they surrendered and asked for mercy.

We did not grant it.

“No surrender! We’ll grind their bones to make our bread!” -my wife

Entry 2

We found a rebel space station housing military supplies and decided to attack. We defeated the defense drone and raided the station. Inside we found a new weapon called the hull beam. Beams sweep across the ship in a line hitting everything in their path. Hull beams do double the damage to the enemy ships when they hit rooms that aren’t attached to a system.

We’ve begun a highly effective battle tactic that involves shooting at the enemy weapon system with the laser, then following that with a barrage from the hull beam once the shields are down.

Entry 3

An alien has joined the crew. He’s an Engi. He’s weak in combat but has a knack for repairing systems (Engi, Engineer, get it?). We saved his crew from pirates and he asked to come with us. His name is Nathan and he’s been assigned to the engine room. Nathan seems like an odd name for an alien, but I’m sure he’ll prove his worth.

Entry 4

Nathan is dead. He never proved his worth. We found a man living alone in a cave on a barren planet. His mental state was questionable, but I thought we could make a spaceman out of him yet. I was wrong. The crazy man murdered Nathan  before the rest of us put him down.

A few jumps later we encountered another Engi named Zoltan, which is a much better alien name. I prefer him already. We saved him from pirates in an episode very reminiscent of what happened with Nathan. Eerie. In any case, I’m sure Zoltan will prove his worth better than Nathan did.

Entry 5

Stumbled upon an Ion Blast Mark II out in the middle of space. Ion weapons don’t do hull damage but they disable systems. The problem with this weapon is it’s a power hog, requiring three slots of energy to use. I’ll need to upgrade the weapon systems.

Entry 6

Our crew is coming together. A ship of slavers demanded we turn over one of our crew to be a slave. We refused and a fight ensued. After a fairly easy scuffle the slavers surrendered and offered one of their slaves as a peace offering. We accepted. Xemu is a Zoltan, a group of aliens that supply one power to any system they’re standing near. I put him in the engine room and moved Zerimar, our Engi. Zerimar’s new job will be to wait around for something to get blown up and then run over and repair it.

Entry 7

We’ve reached sector 6. It belongs to the mantis, a race of large bugs that excel in close combat. They prefer to board and eat their enemies alive.  They boarded the very back of the ship and started to eat their way to the engine room. Xemu fled immediately, leaving our engines unmanned and defenseless.

What sci fi story would be complete without the man eating but aliens?

The mantis broke into the room and started picking away at the engines, making dodging enemy missiles that much more difficult. If the stupid beasts hadn’t shot a missile into the engine room where their own soldiers were, they’d have done far more damage. In the end we defeated the enemy ship, but the hull is damaged and the engines had to be completely repaired.

Haha. Mantis are dumb.

We limped into the next system right next to a star.  A Mantis Fighter attacked us as both ships burned from the burning star’s heat.

Solar flares lit up the ship as we combated the Mantis Fighter. The hull was in bad shape. Two mantis soldiers transported into the engine room and took it out right after it had been repaired. They stormed the next room and cut off life support to the entire ship. We were losing oxygen, and if it ran out we’d have no way of getting it back unless we somehow got by the mantis and repaired the life support.

A solar flair caused the shield system to burst into flames as the mantis broke into the weapons room and I retreated deeper into the ship. A missile slammed into the sensors and put a hole in the side of the hull, sucking oxygen out of the sensors room and forcing us to put it on lockdown.

Life support was down. Engines were down. Shields were down. Weapons and sensors were failing. The ship was on fire and one more hit would end it all. I opened up the airlocks to vent out what little oxygen was left in order to suffocate the fires throughout the ship. In my panic I forgot to open the weapons room doors to suffocate the intruders, and they continued their rampage. Another solar flare was about to finish us off.

The engines were down and we couldn’t jump out of there without them. I sent Zerimar to sneak by the mantis and repair the engines just enough for us to make a jump. He nearly suffocated, but he succeeded and returned to the medical bay barely alive.

We jump away from the star into the great unknown. The mantis are still aboard and the hull is still extremely vulnerable. If we’re hit by anything harder than a light breeze at the next location, we’re all dead.

 To be continued…

You’re filthy. You’re wounded. You haven’t seen the sun in days, and you can’t remember the last time you saw another human being. You’ve seen demons. Dozens of them, and as you reach the top of the stone steps you see another. It looks vaguely human, except it’s hunched over and most of its skin has flaked away. It lunges at you with a rusty dagger, but you bash it away with your shield and smash it across the head with your mace. Again and again until you’re covered in its blood.

There was a time when your goal was to save this rotting world. But now you just want vengeance on these demons for everything they’ve done to you. You enter the fog and see a demonic giant with a goat’s head. You ready your weapon and prepare for battle.

And then you’re mauled by the goat’s pet dogs and horribly killed with one swing of its axe. Was that fun? Maybe not. Dark Souls doesn’t have to be fun. It’s art.

I believe very strongly that games can be art. It’s unfortunate that we call them games, because it traps people into thinking that games have to be fun. But not all good movies are fun to watch. Not all good books are fun to read. Why should all games be fun to play?

Dark Souls is a hero simulation. You play as someone who gives up everything in order to take on evil. The game will punish you for playing it. It’s a long and difficult journey. The beauty in Dark Souls is hard to find, but it’s there, hidden in a world of darkness and despair. The beauty is in the hopelessness.

Stay with me.

It’s often said that Dark Souls is a difficult game. I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it unforgiving. If you’re careful, move slowly and stay ready, you can typically avoid dying. But any mistakes will be punished severely. When people say that Dark Souls is difficult, this is what they mean. It’s not hard for the sake of being hard. Instead, the game has a lasting tension that makes every second matter. Any mistakes could mean death. The difficulty makes it exciting.

Dark Soul’s biggest proverbial kick to the crotch is its experience system. Every time you kill a monster, you get experience for it that the game calls souls. These souls can be used to level up when you get enough of them. If and when you die, you’ll appear at the last checkpoint and all of your experience is lost. If you can get back to the area that you died, you can retrieve it, but if you die on route you lose everything. Checkpoints are rare, so you’ll often have far to travel to the point where you died. One mistake can cost an hour’s progress. It’s brutal.

There’s always a tension, because death could be around any corner. Any second you could lose everything. There are virtually no throwaway enemies, as any demon could kill you if you’re not careful. It’s not so much hard as it is terrifying. There’s demons everywhere, and the few actual living persons have gone mad to cope with the brutally they’ve seen. It’s dark fantasy at its darkest, a post-apocalyptic game with swords and magic.

Fun is difficult to define, but this constant tension is at least interesting. In most games you’re simply going through the motions. Dark Souls is scary in a very real sense, because death is punished so severely. Only in a game like this do you actually feel what it’s like to be the hero. Failure has weight to it. It’s like a movie where you really don’t know if the hero can make it. Evil really might prevail. The hero might give up, because you’re the hero. The feeling is unlike any game I’ve ever played.

There is a point in the hero’s journey where the hero wants to give up, when everything goes to hell and things seem so bleak and impossible. Dark Souls is filled with these. A boss will kill you within three seconds several times in a row. It’ll seem impossible, like nothing you could ever do could ever defeat this boss. But you’ll learn from past mistakes, and suddenly you’ll prevail. It’s an incredible feeling, and no game delivers it quite like Dark Souls. You’ll feel like you triumphed over something that you never thought possible.

All of the hopelessness magnifies the triumphs. Seeing the sun in game means so much more when you’ve spent the last several hours lost in a dimly lit sewer filled with demonic frog things, thinking you’ll never find your way out of there.

Art allows us to feel emotions that we don’t normally feel. To see points of view we don’t normally see. Dark Souls has a bleak, pessimistic vision to be sure. Agree with it or not, it says something about the nature of mankind in the face of suffering. Dark Souls makes you think a little bit. That’s all I ask from art.

I’m Robert Green, a fantasy novelist and video game journalist. Here at Gaming Bolt I write Campfire Gaming, a weekly feature of game journals.

Read more of my work at my personal website, RobertGreenStories.com

Email me: Robert at RobertGreenStories dot com

Welcome to Campfire Gaming. This week we have Terraria, an indie game that’s often called a 2-D Minecraft with an emphasis on combat. A couple of weeks ago I did a journal on The Story of Red Cloud, a mod for Terraria, but today we dive into the vanilla game with a twist. I’ll be playing on Hardcore mode, meaning if I die my character is erased.

Boris Ironbreaker isn’t like other video game characters. When Boris dies, he won’t respawn at the last save or checkpoint. When Boris dies, he’s dead. He has one life. When he loses it, the game will erase him forever. This is because I’m playing Terraria on Hardcore mode. The way I see it, this will be a success no matter what. If Boris lives a long time then that’ll be cool. If he slips and tumbles off a cliff, then we can all have a good laugh at my buffoonery.

This is the saga of Boris Ironbreaker. It’s a story of gold, large holes, and rabbits that inspire men to do wonderful things. This is Terraria on Hardcore mode!

Listen!

Boris Ironbreaker has traveled far in search of gold and glory! Let me recount his many heroic deeds!

“All of nature shall soon bow, trembling before me!” Boris growls as he stumbles into the land of Terraria. He sees an evil green blob thing, and quickly sets to work on it with his copper short sword. “Gooey evil must die!” He dispatches it in short time, and as he wipes the green goo off the bottoms of his shoes he decides it’s time to gather wood to build a house. “I must murder some trees to craft a palace for a king!”

As the sun sets, he can smell evil in the air. He knows that something terrible will soon emerge from the darkness, so he heroically barricades himself in a hole in the ground.

Boris is having a staring contest with a wooden post. He’s a lonely man.

“Foolish blobby thing! You cannot penetrate my underground fortress of doom!” Out of pure boredom, Boris clenches his pickax and sets metal to stone in search of adventure! He finds none, but he does have enough room to build a crafting table and furnace. From there, he builds a mighty broadsword. Now he’s ready to take on the night. But then he sees the zombies.

Lots of zombies. Boris heroically decides to wait until the sun comes up after all. Then he’ll take it to evil!

He finds a place high atop a mountain to build his house. With headquarters ready to go, he’s ready for his first adventure! “My palace for a king is complete, more triumphant than I ever could have imagined!”

This story almost certainly ends with Boris plummeting down the steep cliff right by his house.

Upon spotting a cave near his house, he goes spelunking deep underground for treasure… and danger!

Because he only has a lance and no armor, he heroically avoids most monsters. He gathers copper and iron for better armor and equipment, and even finds some gold. When his pockets are bulging with assorted metals, he leaves the cave and returns home.

Throughout the night he sets to work on some new equipment. Leggings and helmet of bronze, chest plate of iron, and a sword made of solid gold. Non-hero types might argue that building a sword of solid gold is a stupid idea, but Boris understands that in video game land gold is always a good idea. Fully suited and with gaudy sword in hand, Boris is ready to test his metal. As usual, there’s a small army of zombies knocking on his door. But this time, he’s ready for them!

“Die smelly evil ones!” He opens the door and leaps into the crowd of zombies, sending body parts scattering in every direction. “In celebration of my triumphant victory, I shall add another level to my house! I shall add a basement to act as a forge! Oooo! Oooo! And some windows! And a couple lovely vases! And a cute balcony where I can relax after a hard day of monster killing.”

In his early days, Boris was an interior decorator.

As he walks down the mountain in search of more trees to kill, he stumbles upon a pair of rabbits. “Little bunnies!” Considering it to be a sign from the gods, he decides to found a village on this site. He starts building.

But evil is everywhere, and the rabbits pay the ultimate price! A blob leaps in and murders them both! Blood everywhere. “Oh, the horror!” Boris gets his revenge by plummeting his gold sword into the blob’s blobby flesh, but it’s too little too late. The Rabbits are dead.

The blob making its speedy getaway. What a mess.

“Damn you! Damn you all to hell! I vow to have my revenge on all evil-kind! Before I was only killing for glory! Now… now it’s personal.”

He’ll find whatever is causing these monsters and he’ll destroy them once and for all! But first, he’ll continue his town. That is, after all, what the rabbits would want.

And sure enough, people move in. He builds an inn that the guide moves into, and he builds a general store that a traveling merchant decides to call his home.

It’s been a while since Boris has talked to anyone, so he doesn’t realize what a bad conversationalist the merchant is.

A nurse moves into a hospital, and a demolition salesmen moves into an odd underground bunker. An actual town has formed. Boris has learned his lesson from the rabbits, and sets out to protect the townspeople immediately. He builds a wall and names the town in honor of his lost friends.

Boris and the rabbits is truly the love story of this generation.

There is a great feast to celebrate. The merchant ruins the joyful mood by mentioning Cthulu’s Eye, a giant floating eye that’s been terrorizing the countryside.

Boris is so filled with rage by the existence of the Eye that the ‘scrawny’ remark goes right over his head.

“This Eye is no doubt responsible for the senseless murder of my two bunny friends. The eye must die! Goodbye friends! Next time you see me I shall be bathing in the blood of wickedness!” He doesn’t really have any evidence that the Eye is behind all of this, but he won’t let that stop him.

After buying some grenades from the demolition salesmen, Boris travels underground to gather supplies for the final confrontation. He finds huge amounts of iron to complete his armor set. Most monsters fail to give him any trouble. He knows his victory on the Eye is assured. He tares his way through the caves, slaughtering everything in his path. This is a new Boris. A powerful Boris. He decides he’s ready to take on Cthulu’s Eye, and sets out to the surface for a final battle.

On his way up, he spots two skeletons trapped in a pit. Boris smiles and laughs. “Bony fools! You are trapped at my mercy, and I shall provide none!” Boris takes a grenade out of his pack. He hasn’t used one yet. They’re dangerous. But this should be a perfect opportunity to test one out.

“Boris is your god now!” he shouts as he pulls the pin.

Boris heroically tosses the grenade at the defenseless skeletons. It’s an awkward throw born of arrogance, and the grenade bounces back at Boris’ feet and explodes with a mighty blast.

And Boris is dead. Oops! Boris is with his two rabbit friends now, hopefully in a happier place. Legend has it, on cold nights, when the air is still, if you venture into the caves and listen really carefully, you can still hear Boris whispering the words, “Epic fail”.

The game erased Boris forever, so he’s completely unusable, but the world is still intact. Perhaps I”ll return to Rabbit Town with a new hero someday, if for no reason than to prevent this from being the most awkward game journal of all time.

So that’s Boris’ saga. He was able to start a village, and he taught us all a valuable lesson about what not to do with a grenade. Then he died. In any case, this concludes the uncomfortably anticlimactic adventures of Boris Ironbreaker! He died for your entertainment, so don’t be too hard on him for his humiliating failure.

For next week’s journal I’m thinking indie roguelike-but-in-a-spaceship FTL (Faster than Light). Send me an email at Robert at RobertGreenStories dot com or head over to my personal website, RobertGreenStories.com. See you next week. 

Welcome to Campfire Gaming, the weekly series of game journals. This week we have the third and final installment for the 4x indie game, Endless Space. Take a look at Part One here. 

Ceasefires in Endless Space are required to last 10 turns at minimum. My ceasefire with the Horatio Empire lasted exactly 10 turns.

Now the war is back on.

Actually, it’s been back on for a long time. I’ve spent 100 turns grinding on in what’s essentially been a war of attrition. I’ve taken all but one of Horatio’s systems but they’re still able to field a descent fleet. With no other option, I eventually deliver the killing blow.

Now there is no Horatio Empire. They’re all dead.

This is Endless Space Part 3.

It weirdly doesn’t tell you exactly who is out of the game.

What I also don’t realize is the game will end after 300 turns, and I’ve spent far too long dicking around with Horatio. It’s beyond turn 200 and I’ve just now decided the victory condition I’m going for. I’m going to try to win an economic victory. The victory condition simply states that I have to have a certain amount of dust, the currency in Endless Space. It doesn’t say how much I need.

One key seems to be to raise happiness so that my citizens will be okay when I tax their asses into poverty. Right now, taxes in the Amoeba Empire are at 90 percent and the people are happy about it. I’m proud of this. I also sign a cooperative agreement with the humans, both the Pilgrims and the United Empire. Cooperative agreements, I don’t know, make more money somehow. I think it has to do with trade routes, which also aren’t very well explained.

I’ve spent so long dealing with Horatio that I’d lost track of what the others were doing. The United Empire (green) has essentially split the Cravers (blue) into two as they’ve been steadily at war for a long time.

If you like lots of pictures of maps and graphs, you’re gonna love this edition of Campfire Gaming!

The Cravers, a race of bug people that have been making their way towards me recently, have finally arrived at my borders. The Cravers are the primary warmongers of the game, and they aren’t really capable of peaceful diplomacy. They use up a system’s resources much faster than other empires. After a while, the system will be ‘Depleted’, meaning it takes a permanent penalty to the amount of resources it gives. This encourages the Cravers to constantly expand to grab more land as their old land’s valuables deplete. It’s actually pretty awesome, but bad for me.

There’s already been several fights along the edge of our empires, and it’s probably a matter of time before war is declared. As a race of giant bug people, the Cravers aren’t all that interested in diplomacy. I decide to seek help in the form of the humans. I ask both human factions if they’d be interested in allying with a race of oversized amoebas.

The Pilgrims, the humans who escaped the United Empire, decline my invitation.

The United Empire, the questionably evil human faction, accepts. I’m now allied with them.

Much to my surprise and annoyance, the Cravers declare war not on me, but on the United Empire. I’m pulled into the fight as a result of the alliance. Not wanting to fight a war in my own territory, I quickly move ships into Craver space to the system of Ceres. That’s when I discover a big problem. The Craver ships use lasers. I don’t have any laser defense. The Craver ships have high missile defense. I use missiles. The battle for Ceres is predictable.

My research ability is pretty good, and I’m able to research shields (laser defense) quickly. I upgrade to a new type of ship called Black Death (and later, Black Death mark 2). It uses good old fashioned machine guns as its primary weapon and is loaded with shields. They also have a decent ability for system invasions. I reenter Ceres to make up for my previous defeat.

I win as decisively this time as I lost the last battle.

The Cravers are fighting a war on two fronts with me and my human allies, and they’re having a hard time adapting their ships to fight both of us at once. Soon they feel the pressure of the vice we’ve locked in and they begin to lose ground. By the time the war is over there’s only a single system left in the area.

Finally, the Cravers have given up, and it’s time for me to reevaluate my plan.

My economic victory is still a ways off, and I realize I’m actually closer to getting a diplomatic victory (this seems odd because I’ve been at war pretty much the entire game, but whatever). I’m 69 percent of the way to a diplomatic victory. That’s when I notice the United Empire.

They’re 92 percent of the way to a diplomatic victory. In other words, they’re about to win the game. I immediately end the alliance and declare war on them. I spend all of my money on a gigantic military and send the armada to the humans.

I design a new ship called Syphilis specifically designed to destroy the humans. The great war between human and Amoeba for control of the galaxy is about to begin.  I attack several United Empire fleets and do some serious damage. I’m in the process of invading three enemy systems simultaneiously. I’ve swept into human territory and am laying waste to it without warning. Things are going well.

But it’s too late. The United Empire diplomatic score continues to rise, I guess due to peace with other factions. It’s turn 298, and they’re 98 percent to a diplomatic victory. Despite my sudden gigantic military buildup and invasion, I simply don’t have time.

The game ends and tells me I’ve lost. I assume the United Empire won with a diplomatic victory.

What I didn’t know is the game ends on points at turn 300. It takes the score of each faction based on military, economics, quantity and quality of systems, and other things and decides who won the game based on that.

The United Empire wins on points.

I take second place. The only statistic I was first in was military, which I was about to use to destroy humanity for good. Who knows. If I had more time maybe I could have won but I took too long to get my ass in gear. If I’d known it was going to end on turn 300 anyway I definitely would have committed to a war with the United Empire sooner, but somehow I missed that.

Humanity controls the vast majority of the galaxy, but the Amoebas carved out a nice chunk of outer space for themselves. This was my first Campfire Gaming loss. It’s a happy ending for the humans of Old Earth, but a sour defeat for amoebas large and small everywhere.

At least I have the satisfaction of knowing I completely eradicated the Horatio Empire. No one can take that away from me.

I’m Robert Green. Join us next week on Campfire Gaming as we play… I haven’t decided yet! If you have any suggestions of games you’d like to see in this feature, tell me in the comments or send an email to Robert at RobertGreenStories dot com. I’m a novelist and game journalist, responsible for the steampunk fantasy novel Magic Weapons. For more information about me and my work, head over to RobertGreenStories.com. See you next week!