Oaken is a turn based roguelite which reminds me of cooperative boardgames. I certainly felt like I was playing Legends of Andor at some points. The goal of the game is to descend to the Oak Core and find out why the Song, the magic that gives spirits form and purpose, has faded away. In order to accomplish this, you need to gather resources enough in your way down so you can overcome the last obstacles in your way. I didn't find it particularly challenging to reach the end of each chapter in low to medium difficulties, but overcoming each chapter's boss will put your build to the test. Did you manage to combine the resources you found along the way to build a heroic squad tough enough? If not, your trip ends here. Oaken is one of those games that pander to munchkins who love to create overpowered combinations of skills and abilities. You won't be able to take every item you run into, so you need to pick which powerups to take and which ones to leave. The plot is paper-thin and the world-building and character development could have been much better. It is a pity because you can tell an opportunity was wasted here. The game has so much atmosphere for so little background. There are two playable characters, and you may pick among a number of guides. Each guide comes with a set of goodies and skills that change how the game is played. This makes it so even if you play many runs one after the other, you can keep the game fresh by trying different combinations. Each new hero-guide pair makes you re-learn the game and reconsider your new strategies. The main downside is that in the end of the day you are just playing the main quest once and again and again, even if there is variety to make it look like you aren't. Music ranges from serviceable to good. Graphics are fine for what they are, but it is sometimes hard to differentiate units on the board. The UI feels to busy too. Overall, a solid pick with no deal breaking flaws.
This game is a product of its era and it shows its limitations as a result. The ruleset the wargame engine is built on is quite solid, and all mechanics you might expect from the genre are to be found here. You have morale, you have ammo supply lines, and unit commanders have a limited range so units too far away from their leaders become isolated. There is a lot of subtle minutia regarding rules about formations, skirmishers and the advantages of certain weapons against others. For example, muzzle-loaders are harder to reload and fire back from a prone position, so a unit trying to do so is at a disadvantage against soldiers armed with modern rifles. Most of the complexity runs underground, concealed by the engine, but I certainly recommend reading the manual if you want to make the most out of the game. Still, the basics are very easy to learn and a new player will pick it up in no time. Complex mechanics can be disabled or enabled at will anyway. The main issue this game suffers is that the AI is not that great. I find it quite ok at defending, but it has issues when playing the role of an attacker. I have seen the AI prioritize its movements quite badly, preferring to chase routed units which were not a threat anyway instead of securing strategic objectives which were needed to win the scenario. AI difficulty can be adjusted, but it does not modify the quality of its brain: it just provides a statistical handicap for things such as morale checks. As a curiosity, the game has an email mode which allows you to play with Internet opponents via email. I doubt anybody is using it in this day and age, but I find it noteworthy. Most of the music is above average and scenarios are well designed for the most part. There used to be a sizeable modding community for this game. Fan-made scenarios and mods can be still found if looked for.
Forewarning: I have only played Incoming, not Incoming forces. I remember thinking the graphics were awesome when I first played this game as a kid. Obviously, they are outdated by today's standards, but they are also still serviceable. The game is composed of a series of missions and each mission is composed of a series of phases. In each phase, you control a vehicle -be it a tank, fighter, helicopter, you name it- and must accomplish a critical task for the ongoing war against aliens. Each task is mostly there to spice things up a bit, because at its core each phase consists in the game throwing hordes and hordes and hordes of aliens at you while you mow them down with your futuristic weaponry. Incoming was made in an era in which you were expected to play the games with either a keyboard or a joystick. Still, I found this game to be quite playable with a gamepad, and I found it quite alright for couch gaming. Gamepad support is partial only, and you will need the keyboard for non gameplay related tasks such as saving or loading the game. The main downside of this game is that it is not very replayable. The campaign can be beaten in an afternoon if you put your mind into it, and afterwards there is not much else to do with the game. Playing arcade mode only carries the game forward for so long. Some people also complains that the game is a bit repetitive because 99.5 of it is just killing stuff, but in my opinion that is like purchasing a flight simulator and complaining most of it is about flying. That said, once you factor how cheap this game is, it is great bang for the buck. At less than 3 USD, I found this repackaging of the game to be a great purchase. It was just what I needed to spice up a weekend party with gaming nerds.
You can tell a lot of love was poured into the making of BallisticNG. It feels like a product created by Wipeout fans for Wipeout fans. This is not a shameless rip-off, though. Despite many of the elements being recognizable by old-school fans, BallisticNG ultimately has its own sense of identity. The base game comes with a number of campaigns for single player gaming. Campaigns are just series of events -races, time trials, you name it- which award you a medal according to your results (ie. gold, silver, or bronze). New events within the campaign and new campaigns are unlocked by winning medals in available events. The requisites for unlocking content are pretty lenient, which means you can open new paths without having to achieve gold at everything. That said, this is were this game's claim to mercy end. BallisticNG has a reputation for being a hard nut to crack. Developers tried to make the game accessible, having campaigns introduce new game mechanics one at a time, but progressing past a certain point still requires practice, at least if you aim for gold medals. Beating tracks requires becoming intimately familiar with them and with the ship you pilot. This is specially so if you switch to "expert" difficulty, which is required to obtain platinum medals. The joke goes that the two difficulties supported should be called "hard" and "perfect flight required". If you are up for a challenge, this is your ticket; if you are more casual, you can still progress through with bronze and silver medals. There is a diverse array of ships to fly, and each ship feels quite distinct. There are also many game modes to spice things up, and the AI works well on them all. "Hardcore" level AI will prove a challenge to beat on all modes. As opposed to early anti-gravity racers, you rarely feel in control because AI opponents keep applying pressure on you. BallisticNG makes subtle use of rubberbanding, but if that is not your thing it may be disabled entirely.
