Top 11 of '11 (iOS). Number 1 - Silversword.

A lot of you might not have heard of my number 1 pick. And, it's fair to say, I may have been wearing rose-tinted glasses whilst picking it. But so what? It may be very retro, and not terribly original, but you could say that about a lot of games in this list. It's not a "Top 11 all-original all-new-concept games" or a "Top 11 non-retro games" list. It's my favourite iOS games of 2011. And Silversword is my very favourite of them.


Bit of a dump, this, innit?

When I was a lad, back in the mid-to-late-80s, I owned a Commodore 64. One day, I wandered into the computer shop as normal, and there on the shelf was a game called The Bard's Tale. I'd read the review of it in ZZAP! 64, and it sounded amazing. But it was disk-only. Or so I thought...

I picked it up to have a look at it, and saw that this version came on two cassettes. And it was only £2.99! There was no way I could turn that down, not at that price. So I bought it, and trundled off home to play...


Cat got your tongue? Oh... no. I see that it hasn't.

It wasn't what you would call an immediate game, The Bard's Tale. To a novice, all the rolling characters and stuff was a bit highbrow. The game did give you a pre-rolled team to play with if you wanted, but where's the fun in that? Once you got started, exploring the ruins of Skara Brae was genuinely thrilling... until one of you got killed by a low-level monster and you had to either start again or create a new character.

Eventually, you'd learn to fight your battles carefully and save after every one. It was the only way to make progress, and it was very slow going, but you could cut the tension with a broadsword. After a long time spent creeping about you'd be able to level up, becoming more powerful and finding better weapons and armour. And then you'd feel brave enough to tackle your first dungeon...


Come on gang, let's get powerful!

The Bard's Tale took me thirteen months to complete. I can say, with complete honesty, that I enjoyed every second of it. Yes, even the multiload. Yes, even the epic fight with four groups of 99 Berserkers. On occasions such as these, I'd just read ZZAP! 64 or listen to my Yngwie Malmsteen albums. Happy days.

Here's where the point emerges. I've been looking for a game like The Bard's Tale for years. I could play the original on an emulator, but time has robbed me of much of the patience I need. The Etrian Odyssey games fit the bill even if they are really, really hard. But they're on the DS, and I don't carry that around with me (shamefully, I don't use it much in the house, either). But Silversword, on my iPhone, is perfect.


Hey, look! The circus in town!

It really could be The Bard's Tale IV. The game has that distinct style you'd expect of a Bard's Tale game... three windows, one at the bottom displaying your party, one at the top left showing you the game world, and one at the top right giving you a description of anything interesting that's happening. A heart-warming sight, indeed.

So, once you've had a read of the instruction manual, you'll be ready to go. Hang on a minute... what? That's right... Silversword comes with a 41-page instruction manual. It's a real rarity nowadays, and is very welcome. If you're particularly enamoured, you can buy (for £1.99, through In-App Purchases) the Silversword compendium, which is an expanded version of the manual running at 74 pages.


Jeeesus Christ! Run away! Run awaaaaaaay!

I've forked out for that, although you're not missing that much if you don't. You'll get illustrations and more details on the character classes, which are nice additions. Of more practical use are the creature and item lists. These seemingly-exhaustive documents provide all kinds of information... values of items, who can use them and what benefits they give, for example, and creature types, hit points and XP values. This could be seen as being a bit spoilerish, but if you don't buy it you've got nothing to worry about, and if you do you're probably going to be playing the game enough to find it of real use.

Silversword begins with you in the Ruin Camp in the realm of Tarnak. There's a team pre-assembled and waiting... rather like a new car, you can take them out for a "test drive" while you get used to the game, its controls and how it works. They're a decent bunch, and if you want to play the game with them you most certainly can. However, it's much more enjoyable to roll your own characters, and go to battle yourself with a bunch of your mates or heroes by your side. I have a load of real-life musicians that I like battling with me... yes, I'm just that sad.


Ahhh, that Sister Elenore is a Saint!

Once you're out and about, you'll find yourself in the ruins of Castle Cranbourgh. It's best to have a bit of a wander and familiarise yourself with the surroundings. At first, you'll be spending a lot of time here. Luckily, the game auto-maps itself, and it allows you to make notes at points of interest. This is a great feature, and saves massively on the cost of graph paper!

The wrecked town around the castle contains an armoury, weapons store, training hall and shrine. From these you can buy armour and weapons (obviously), level up when you have the experience, and heal wounded characters. You'll also encounter characters in the town that will prove useful if you can complete certain actions...


Alright, gang... we're going in...

Set foot a bit further afield, and you'll find towers and dungeons, and new, fiercer creatures. That's why you have to take baby steps... stray too far and you'll get creamed. This kind of "grinding" is either loathed or tolerated it seems... I really don't mind it in games like this, because I genuinely enjoy the whole process. Just pottering about and figuring the lie of the land is good.

Another benefit of doing this is that the more you perform certain actions, the better you get at them. So spellcasters are more likely to cause more damage with a spell the more they use it, for example (not exceeding its maximum, of course). So it does pay to beat up the little guys, although whether it's worth the time it takes is debatable.


Alright, now it's brown trousers time!

Your actual quest is very vague. You don't really know what to do or where to go. But I actually like this aspect of it. It means that you piece together the storyline as you go. Or at least, that's what I'm expecting. I haven't got all that far yet, at least, I don't think I have. I've no idea how big this game might be. But I'm going to find out... even if it takes me thirteen months, or longer... there have been loads more Yngwie Malmsteen albums released since then...

Silversword is my number one iOS game of 2011. It's a Universal app, and is currently £2.99... exactly the same price I paid for The Bard's Tale about twenty-five years ago.

On the fourth day of Christmas, A Gamer Forever Voyaging gave to me... four calling birds?

When I first started this blog, I had the intention of occasionally going back to a game I'd written about, revisiting it and posting my thoughts on the game once I'd completing it. You know how many times I've done that so far? None. Not once. I might have written about a game more than once, but not in a retrospective manner. But that's changing today.


Aaahhh... there's nothing like a warming winter fire.

The game I'm giving away today is Alpha Protocol, a game I first played on the XBox 360 and first wrote about on August 15, 2010. I really enjoyed it then, and fully expected to play it to completion... but then, as usual, I was distracted by the shiny and the new, and Alpha Protocol was put on the back burner.

Something about it kept jabbing away at my brain, though, and I kept getting the urge to play it. And so I would, for an hour or so, making a little progress and then putting it away again. It's not the ideal way to play any game, especially one that's so heavily story-oriented. And then, last month, I started it up yet again, but got hooked enough to get to the end.


Something tells me she could be a bit of a... pistol? Does it look like she's got nice... guns? Austin Powers has got nothing on me.

Alpha Protocol is billed as "The Espionage RPG". And indeed, there's an element of role-playing to it, with you earning points so that you can level-up your skills throughout the game. Depending on what you choose to improve, you can either be a suave and sophisticated ladies' man, with a silver tongue and smooth-as-silk stealthy movement. Or you can be a brutal crack-shot agent, with awesome hand-to-hand skills to match.

A lot of people online complained about the poor nature of the gunplay and the stealth in Alpha Protocol. And yes, initially, there's a fair bit lacking. The controls are woolly, aiming isn't especially accurate and there are frustrations in the way you're led down certain pathways, with scope for exploring levels pretty much eliminated.


Oh no! Such carnage! What a waste of arcade machines!

But if you persevere, you'll be rewarded. Many of these elements improve as your levelled-up abilities improve, making the game more fun to play. But that's only the half of it...

The real star of this game is the dialogue, or rather, the way the dialogue is handled. There's a lot of talking here, but it's all necessary, and it's done in a way that makes the game quite gripping. It's certainly more intriguing than your average game, I feel. There are many characters to interact with, and when talking with them, rather than give you a choice of lines to speak, you're given a choice of mannerisms. The way you respond determines your success.


Look at that expression. You'd think I'd come home at 4am with lipstick on my collar.

It could be disastrous, but it really works incredibly well. You have to get to know each character you're interacting with, so that you know how to stroke them in order to get what you want, or how to wind them up until they snap. And depending on how your interactions go, you might or might not open up other missions or opportunities.

I really feel that this is a brilliant engine, and although Alpha Protocol does have its share of gameplay weaknesses, it really is worth sticking with until the end. Not only that, I'm planning to replay it in a completely different way, to see how else it might play out. There won't be a sequel, but the premise and conversation system is so good it would be a real shame if it didn't get used again.


Surely if "Headslam" is an option, you'd use it every time?

You can see just what I'm talking about, if you own a PC and use Steam. I'm giving away a copy of Alpha Protocol on Steam. All you have to do is post a link to this piece somewhere appropriate (Twitter, gaming forum etc.), and add a comment here letting me know how you've plugged me, and you'll be in the draw. Good luck!

Oh... four calling birds? Well, there's an Achievement in the 360 version for "romancing" the four main female characters in the game. And as they call you regularly in the game... well, there you go!

Advent Calendar - December 14th.

Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth (PC)

I'm willing to bet that most people haven't heard of this game... at least, not under this title. In the U.K., it was released as B.S.S. Jane Seymour. So I've cheated a bit here, because obviously it wouldn't have fit the theme if I'd used that title. Hey, I'll try anything to avoid playing a flight simulator!


Yeah, sorry Guv, you're missing your energy flux decoupler. It'll be weeks till we've got one of those in.

Needless to say, I had no idea what this one was about myself. So it was with no little intrigue that I loaded it up... and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was obviously on a spaceship, and the basic controls were simple enough to figure out, but beyond that... clueless.

After some exploring and trial and error, I can say that Spacewrecked appears to be some kind of cross between Dungeon Master and Paradroid. Wait a minute - that sounds about as good as gaming can possibly get! But just hold on a minute before you go getting too excited and spending fortunes on eBay to play it.


Aaaaarrgh! Jesus! Why would you keep one of them on board? Hope I don't find one...

As the story goes, you're among a fleet of twenty spaceships heading back to Earth when the voyage is stalled by radiation damage to the ships. Unfortunately, your ship hasn't got enough fuel to complete the trip even if it gets repaired, and due to the complicated nature of the fleet you can't just transfer everybody to another one and whizz off home. Besides, all have sustained an amount of damage and will need to be patched up. You have to work through them in order, starting with the B.S.S. Jane Seymour, and once all twenty ships are repaired to at least eighty per cent efficiency, you're in business.

That would be a tall order at the best of times, but the computer estimates that only five per cent of the crew are fully fit across all twenty ships. The rest are liable to be either physically or mentally incapacitated. To make things more difficult still, alien lifeforms are liable to be roaming the ship...


Now, where was it we needed this again...?

If you've ever played a game like this, the layout will be familiar. The ship's corridors are displayed in a small part of the screen, with icons and status messages taking up the rest. As you wander around, you'll find a number of items lying around. These are likely to prove useful, and luckily your inventory, although limited, is sizeable. The main thing you're looking for is liquid coolant, as a deficiency in the stuff is causing the majority of malfunctions. Oh, and you'll need things to carry the liquid...

An interesting aspect of the game is the ability to use the ship's robots to your advantage. You don't have to, but doing so will make your task a fair bit easier. There's a variety of useful droids, including combat droids, repair droids and computer droids. The droids can also perform life-saving healing duties, if properly equipped.


The Rolling Stones' Tour had gone to more places than ever this year.

Spacewrecked/B.S.S. Jane Seymour is obviously a massive game... twenty ships to repair, each with three decks, will take a long, long time to play through. It'll take even longer if you're as rubbish at it as I am. Despite my inadequacies, though, I found this game really intriguing. I'd love to make the time to have a proper crack at it... having a PC version (it's also available on the Amiga and ST) and not needing to swap disks every five minutes means I'm more inclined to have a go. It's been a good find, this one.

Planescape: Torment (PC)

Here's a game I've meant to play for years. I'd originally bought it when I was living in America. At that time, there were companies that were re-releasing classic PC games in cool cardboard slipcase/jewel case packages, costing no more than $9.99. Every time we went to any mall or outlet, I'd pop into the games stores and see what new stuff they had on the racks. I managed to build up a fairly substantial and, dare I say it, impressive collection... only to lose a fair bit of it when I sold a lot of stuff before I moved back here.

It's proven more difficult to find over here, but recently it's had a physical re-release and has been made available on the fantastic GOG.com. And that's where I got it from.


Well, that's just lovely, that is.

Planescape: Torment is a computer RPG based on Dungeons & Dragons rules. That means nothing to me, as I only briefly dabbled in D&D and that was when I was about nine years old, when an older lad who fancied himself as a Dungeon Master both created and killed my character within the space of about two hours. Wanker.

Anyway, enough of my mental scarring. When I first played this I got stuck in the first room and didn't have the patience to carry on... that, plus I had too many other games to play (that bit hasn't changed at all!). This time, I vowed to do better and see exactly why this game is so highly rated in the gaming community.


Damn the limitations of a 400px wide image.

It turns out that the reason the game is so highly rated because of the dialogue. Planescape: Torment is very dialogue-heavy. In many games this can be tedious, but Planescape: Torment has some very funny and quirky dialogue which is almost always a joy to click through. You're an undead character, waking up on a morgue table and not actually realising your plight. And you'd probably never realise your plight, if it wasn't for the incredibly mouthy skull that befriends you and proceeds to rabbit on the whole way around.

Morte is your new friend's name, and he's the sassiest, sarkiest skull this side of Trap Door, but with a healthier sexual appetite. Yes, you read that right. Those cadaverous laydeez that wander around the place are right up his street, and he doesn't mind letting you know it. It's a bit bizarre, and pretty funny.


Phwooooarrr, eh? Look at that bit of stuff.

Dialogue aside, I have struggled a bit with the actual game so far. It's an isometric 3D adventure... it's not exactly Knight Lore, it's a bit more advanced than that, and it employs a "fog of war" technique which keeps large areas of the playfield obscured until you actually need to see it. That hasn't been the issue for me, it's that the game has a lot of menus and I still haven't quite got to grips with all the options and icons.

Still, that's my own cack-handedness to blame. It's not the game's fault that I have a hard time actually clicking on the thing I want to kill. Combat hasn't been particularly exciting so far either... it's pretty much a slugfest at the moment. It's obvious that there's far more depth to Planescape: Torment than has been revealed to me so far, and the banter alone is easily enough to keep me going, with the interesting storyline adding an extra hook. I reckon I'll be getting a netbook soon, and I can easily see me installing this on there and playing through it at a leisurely pace.

Deadly Premonition (XBox 360)

I've just spent the last hour playing a game I bought on the way home this afternoon... Deadly Premonition, on the XBox 360. Don't consider this a review (not many of my posts are reviews anyway, really)... an hour's worth is nowhere near enough to do it justice. I'm just setting down some initial thoughts.

Deadly Premonition is a survival horror game... more specifically, it's a Japanese survival horror, which means it's gloriously fucked up. First impressions, though, are a bit iffy. I mean, it looks like a PS2 game which, given that we're years into the 360's lifespan, is a bit worrying.


Bet I wouldn't have had this problem if I'd bought a Zippo.

Still, right from the start it's interesting, with a bizarre-but-attention-grabbing opening sequence. It's not giving anything away to say there's been a murder, and you're playing the detective sent in to the sleepy backwater town to investigate. And I think it's fair to say that this guy has issues of his own...

Deadly Premonition, as well as being a survival horror game, also has a bit of RPG thrown in. Weapons deteriorate through use, meaning you'll want to carry a few at once and switch between them. But as well as maintaining weapons and health, you'll have to eat, drink, sleep and avoid getting too scruffy. I'm not sure how that works yet, I haven't been playing long enough.


There, there, lads... it'll be alright. Actually, it might not.

I've read a few things about this game in the past few days. Reviews have been about as mixed as for any game I've seen. The graphics have been hit the hardest, but they're serviceable, and what do you expect for a cheap game anyway? I've also read that the controls are bad. Listen, if you've ever played Resident Evil 4 to any degree of proficiency, you won't have a problem playing this game.

So far, I've found Deadly Premonition to be genuinely weird, genuinely funny and genuniely creepy. When those twisted, backwards-facing "Ju-on"-like ghouls appear from seemingly nowhere, moaning "I want to diiiiiiie" with voices like a Rick Astley seven-inch single played on 33 RPM, you'll definitely jump, and quite high at times.


Oh, for Christ's sake. That's just wrong.

Get further into the game and you have to maintain vehicles, and you'll encounter local townsfolk who you'll need to interact with if you're to get anywhere. Seemingly, accepting side missions will give you additional rewards. No idea what they could be, but they can only be good things, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to finding out how it all works, and how it pans out.

So, from my first hour or so it seems that Deadly Premonition is part Resident Evil 4, part Alan Wake, with a bit of the twisted side of killer7 thrown in for good measure and to keep you on your toes. Seems like a winning combination to me... I'm suitably intrigued enough to be invested in it now. Fantastically, as the title screen appears it says "Marvelous Entertainment 2010". Yes. Yes, it is.

Getting Wasted. Part 2: School's Out.

Day one:

We finally decided that we couldn't hang around in the Ranger Centre forever. Sure, it's fairly comfortable... more comfortable than anything we're likely to find in the Wasteland... but we needed to see what's out there, and how bad things are. Unfortunately, it didn't take us long to find out that they are really bad... we were attacked by a Slithering Lizard as soon as we set foot out of the door. Fortunately, YJ Malmsteen had his gun loaded and likes shooting animals. I guess we could have tried the friendly route, but this guy didn't look like he wanted a pat on the head.


Oooh, look at that fella. Wonder if we could use his hide for anything?

Day two:

We set out beyond the nearby mountain range, in search of civilisation, or maybe abandoned technology. But it's so hot by those mountains! We headed inland for refuge, and in a secluded spot in the mountains found ourselves a settlement called Highpool. It seems somewhat deserted ... and it must have been a school town, as there are lots of abandoned dormitories here. It seems like a good place to rest for now... it's pretty enough, and there's a fresh water supply. At least, it seems fresh...

Tomorrow we'll explore the place.


Civilization! Or is it... it's too quiet, and we don't know how civil any residents might be...

Day three:

Well, it seems that Highpool is not entirely deserted. In the farthest corner of the settlement, we found a sobbing child. All efforts to gain information about the place proved fruitless, though... the child was so upset about something that he just blubbed at everything we said.

Having failed to coax so much as a useful sentence from the boy, we headed back to town. We found another resident... a shopkeeper, of all things. It seems bizarre to us that a shop could survive in this place... it's practically devoid of life. And yet, there he was, offering us a range of, it has to be said, useful items. Pity we hadn't thought to bring much in the way of cash...


Jesus! Erm, no thanks... that's alright... see ya...

Day four:

We've stumbled across an infirmary. When we entered it, I initially had thoughts of pilfering anything that might be of use in our travels, even if it were just a few bandages. But then, somebody stepped from behind the curtain...

I take it he was a surgeon or doctor, because he was offering to heal anyone that needed it. Luckily, nobody did... from the look of him, or should I say, his blood-soaked scrubs, it's possible he's not the most proficient at his trade... we thanked him for his offer, and then hot-footed it out of there!


Well, now. This looks interesting. Surely we can do something here...?

Day five:

Things have begun to look very interesting in Highpool. In one of the dormitories, there's a large machine. There are pipes going under the floor... I wonder if it's hiding something? We're going to try and move it later.

Then, later in the day, we went back to try and talk to the weeping kid. Turned out he's upset over his sick dog. He said he'd hidden him in a cave behind the bushes. We've searched the area and can't find any cave... is the kid deluded? Or are we just looking in the wrong place? Hopefully we'll have more luck tomorrow...

Number 5.

Dungeon Master (Commodore Amiga)

Many of the games I've played for the blog, I've never heard of before. Then there are others that are absolute legends of the gaming world. In those cases, I've looked forward to them for ages before actually playing them.

Dungeon Master is an absolute legend. I had been looking forward to playing it... and then found that it wasn't in my pile. A quick ebay trawl soon put that right, and a-dungeoning I went.

What an experience Dungeon Master is. It was almost certainly the first game to do dungeon crawls in such an atmospheric and immersive fashion. I don't mind admitting that there were more than a couple of moments where I was a bit nervous about turning a corner.


I had to nick a picture this time. And this is the best I could do. Pah.

It's a beautifully designed game, and I always felt like I was progressing just enough to be able to cope with anything new that I happened upon... as long as I was careful. Of course, I wasn't, and I saved the game at a place where I hardly had any energy and there were four mummies in my path. There was no other way past, so I kept dying.

That was frustrating, but it was my own fault. I've started another game since, and I'm doing a bit better, or at least being a bit more careful. Dungeon Master may have aged, but it's still a truly excellent and groundbreaking game. It's one of my favourite experiences from the blog, and more than justifies its place in this rundown.

Torchlight (PC)

I haven't played this a lot as yet, but I really need to mention it as soon as possible, because it's available on Steam for £7.49 until the end of 3rd January. And for that price, I would seriously recommend a purchase.

Torchlight is, basically, exactly what you need right now if you're sick of the wait for Diablo III. It's a game very much in the Diablo vein, created by a lot of the minds behind Diablo. So the gameplay is exactly what you'd expect - an isometric-view dungeon crawler, with loads of enemies to smash and loot to find.


Get 'em, boy... set 'em off.

There's a bit of a difference, in that your character has a pet. At the start of the game, you can choose whether your companion will be a dog, or a cat. Your faithful friend will be at your side (well, I say that... I chose a dog. Christ knows what a cat will do.), assisting you in your questing. It will attack or defend at your command. And if you feed it fish, it will develop special powers. Yes, even the dog.

Torchlight is also a gorgeous-looking game. It's very simple to play, following the tried-and-tested pointing and clicking to move/attack/bring up inventory/character screens. It's a real pleasure, and should be keeping me occupied for a good length of time. There's a rumour doing the rounds that Diablo III was pushed back because of how good Torchlight is. Whether that's true or not, you know what you're looking at here, and it'll scratch that loot-collecting itch very nicely.