The Warp Pipe

Filed under: Other Games

The game starts with you reclaiming your base, which was taken over by an insurgence group. You’re immediately met with adult content in the way of language and violence, as you storm your former base to reclaim it while sending plenty of troops to their graves. This isn’t a case where bloodshed is a concern, though, as human soldiers are incredibly tiny, and simply vanish when killed, rather than staying on screen.

Once you’ve reclaimed your base, you’ll begin the process of adding defensive units, and upgrading your resource production buildings to ensure that you can fight off future attacks. In this, War Commander takes on elements of a city-builder (to give it a comparison), as you’ll build new resource buildings in your base or will upgrade your current structures to produce more oil or metal, as two examples. Your starting capacity for these resources is rather low, so you’ll use small amounts of resources to build storage buildings, increasing your cap, or can spend these resources to upgrade their production per hour/day.

There’s much more to be said about the home base of course, including the fact that you’ll have a Power Plant that will determine how effective most of your other buildings are in their work. For instance, if you are using more power than you’re generating, your defensive turrets will lose some of their defensive capabilities (that is, instead of operating at 100%, they may only operate at half power, leaving your base weakened). This will ultimately cause you to frequently upgrade your Power Plant to produce more power, as completing the game’s many initial missions will likely see you placed in this position before you even reach level 5.

Speaking of upgrades, almost everything has them, from the storage buildings to the troops themselves. You’ll use resources to unlock new types of troops, and can then research upgrades for these troops so that they’ll do considerably more damage, as but one example.

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Of course, while building and micro-managing your base is one thing, you’ll also frequently be asked to put your new troops and resources to work by attacking enemy bases. This is a two-sided process, allowing you to attack computer-controlled bases or those of your friends (or even strangers). Bases have levels, which give you an idea as to their expected strength, and you can scout out each base before actually attacking to see if you have what it takes.

Unfortunately, the process of attacking is, for the most part, passive, as you’ll visit a base, click on the land to place your chosen troops on the battlefield and will then watch them go about their business, while you simply control your own view of the field. You can actively click on troops and tell them where to go or who to attack, but they’re smart enough to do the job without any interference from you. While watching buildings (and troops alike) blow up is pretty cool, the real reason for attacking enemies will be to loot their buildings. After you’ve killed all enemy troops, you can destroy their entire bases, giving you the metal and oil spoils once you’ve finished them off.

Adding to the social elements of the game are an in-game chat feature, which will let you chat with both friends and strangers alike, and the ability to simply visit your friends’ bases to see how far they’ve progressed (and take notes for how you can improve your own base to match).

When all of the dust settles, does War Commander, with its admittedly intuitive gameplay, have what it takes to draw in a hardcore gaming crowd, even when the true RTS elements in battle can be handled automatically by the computer? Take a look at our hands-on time with the game in our video below for more on what to expect from the game, and then you tell us what you think.

So, what do you think of War Commander? Are you excited to get your hands on this violent, yet accessible RTS on Facebook, or do you like your micro-management served in larger, deeper packages through full download games? Sound off in the comments.

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Filed under: CityVille

If you’re tired of simply collecting Zoning Permits from your friends in CityVille, and even the idea of purchasing bundles of Zoning Permits has become boring to you, then why not take a look at two new “Expansion Packs” that have been added to the game? These packs are limited-time-only objects, although we unfortunately don’t have an exact time limit for their departure (typical). What we can tell you though, is that you’ll gain plenty of Zoning Permits in each bundle, along with some “free” goodies.

Here’s a complete look at both (warning: expensive prices ahead!):

Expansion Pack 1 – Costs: 150 City Cash

• 40 Zoning Permits
• One Founder’s Residence (300-650 population)
• One Pastel Houses (700-1,000 population)

Expansion Pack 2 – Costs: 65 City Cash

• 20 Zoning Permits
• One Celebrity House (600-850 population)

As you can see, the bonuses here aren’t just “free” citizen boosts (keep in mind you are paying a premium for these packs, so these bonuses aren’t exactly free), but they also contain limited edition items that were thought to be gone from the game forever. As one example, the Celebrity House was available in early July and then retired, while the Founder’s Residence (or Founder’s Building, as it is sometimes referred to) was available even earlier in June. Does that make these bundles worth a purchase? That will ultimately be up to you.

Think about it this way – what are these extra houses worth to you? Since you can ultimately collect all of those Zoning Permits for free from friends, these bonuses are all your City Cash investment goes towards anyway. If they’re worth 150 and 65 City Cash, respectively, then go for it; just make sure you’re comfortable spending that much money on some otherwise free items before you pull the proverbial trigger.

Will you buy either of these Expansion Packs in CityVille, or will you stick to collecting Zoning Permits for free the old fashioned way? Sound off in the comments.

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