Gaming the Pandemic - Day 12: Glory Days (aka Super Army War) (GBA)

Latest in my attack on (at least) one title from my 632 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

A step forward from the GBC yesterday to the GBA today as the randomiser has chosen...

Glory Days on the Game Boy Advance

Way back in 1984 there was a game on the Apple II called Rescue Raiders. A forerunner of Choplifter, it featured similar gameplay to that later game combined with light Real Time Strategy elements. 3 years later, initially on the same machine, came the slightly better known Wings of Fury. Similar to Rescue Raiders with it's side on view but with a more attack focused outlook and the helicopter swapped for a WWII, carrier launched, Hellcat fighter.

For some reason, 20 years after Rescue Raiders first saw the light of day, a french developer called Neko (who spent most of their days phoning in cash-grab licensed games for whomsoever hired them) decided to take these two classics, smoosh them together, and remake them into a game called Glory Days which was then rebranded to the mind numbingly generic 'Super Army War' in the US.

Being a wholesale rip-off of two good games means that Glory Days is itself a good game. You fly either the chopper or the Hellcat over the battlefield as the good-guys advance from the right and the bad-guys from the left, attacking with the weapons specific to either vehicle.

During their advance your troops capture bunkers, these generate extra cash, which in turn generates extra troops. So in destroying the enemy you help the ground troops advance to the next bunker and eventually to the enemy base for victory. Pretty standard RTS stuff, just simplified into a side on view.

The depictions of the troops, tanks, choppers, and fighters are all small but quite detailed. The style is pseudo-realistic and while it looks nice, to my tastes the pixels of Wings of Fury on the Amiga - or even the GBC - were more attractive. Glory Days is by no means a bad looking game, it just lacks a little personality. Additionally, on the original GBA or even the front-lit SP, Glory days can be quite hard to make out when there is a lot going on. It looks great on the Micro though and if that's not an option the DS is a great alternative.

I'm not generally a fan of the RTS genre but so much is taken care of automatically in Glory Days that I found it didn't bother me at all. In the earliest levels strategy is as light as choosing which targets to hit, more depth follows later in the game but it never takes away from the feeling that your actions in the air are having the most direct impact on the tide of the battle.

Basically, this is game that steals directly from too highly addictive classics and essentially lets you play them both at the same time. It may leave a bad taste in the mouth for some, but on pure entertainment value it's a hard game to fault.

Glory Days (GBA) - Perfect pocket plagiarism. 'Wings of Rescue Raiders' if you will.

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) quick burst Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Day Eight was the disappointingly awkward Draconus on ZX Spectrum

Day Nine was the idiosyncratic Ring of Red on PS2

Day Ten I lost half my text while trying to explain how Assassin's Creed Syndicate on PC was a pleasant, is simplistic, surprise.

Day Eleven was the utterly broken Perfect Dark on GBC

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 9: Ring of Red (PS2)

Latest in my attack of (at least) one title from my 636 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

The random game selector has actually picked two titles today, but the one I'm going to talk about is

Ring of Red on Playstation 2 (Played on 60gb PS3)

The other one, Crazy Cars on the C64 was so irredeemably terrible that I actually played it for less time than it took the tape to load. But still, another one off the the backlog list at least.

Crazy Cars (C64) - Avoid like Covid 19

There's a tenuous link, I guess, between the old 8 bit days of Crazy Cars and Ring of Red which was released exclusively for the PS2 in 2001

The cover tape on the front of the August 1990 issue of Your Sinclair featured a demo of Back to the Future II, about which 'young me' was very excited. Having rushed home with my copy and waited patiently for the tape to load I soon discovered that this game was awful. Fortunately, also on the tape that month was a full and complete copy of Rebelstar II, which was definitely not awful, but also scratched my naive desire for a movie tie-in game. Rebelstar II, in case you're not familiar, rips off all of its character and enemy designs from the Alien movies.

And thus, on that day, my love of Turn Based Strategy games was born.

It's a genre completely at odds with my usual tastes (I grew up with the arcades) so I have to make a special effort to discover new games in this area. I think I remember reading a retrospective of Ring of Red and the author being so enthusiastic about it that I decided to track down a copy - it's certainly not a game that's been in my backlog from its release date and equally not something I've stumbled across at a boot sale or CEX.

Set in an alternative universe post-WWII Japan that has been geo-politically divided between East and West, Ring of Red has you as the pilot of an AFW (Armoured Fighting Walker), a hulking mechanised tank of the kind that apparently rule the battlefields of this other reality.

In gameplay you control the AFW and two infantrymen who provide both small arms fire and other support roles. Battles take place on a standard grid with units getting the usual allocation of movement and firing ranges.

So far, so every-TBS-ever, but Ring of Red really starts to stand out when two units are engaged in direct combat. Rather than the sort of canned animation that is usual for the genre, here you take direct control of the mech and issue real time orders to the support troops. Even though this is rather limited (interactions are ostensibly 'forward', 'back', 'stop' and 'fire') they have a real impact on events. The battle combat system is based on range and time; get into the optimal range, take time to aim, and the resulting damage will be maximised.

All this is viewed from a low angle next to your unit which provides a tangible sense of scale and a real immersion in the battle.It does make Ring of Red a very slow game, but for me this had an almost mesmeric effect - the game has a unique rhythm that I found captivating.

There are issues, though most of them lie with polish and presentation. The most jarring is the translation job, which is all over the place. At one point early on I was asked a question with two possible, detailed options as answers, and then given the option to answer either Yes or No... Unfortunately this was not the only nonsensical passage I came across in my short time playing.

On the positive side the game certainly has a consistent, if perhaps overly brown, art style.The graphics in the combat sections are borderline low-poly and the AFWs look all the better for it. They have a real sense of size and weight.Outside the combat the game reminded me a lot of the Ace Combat series on the same hardware; the tone is similarly serious on the subject of war despite the fantastical setting.

Ring of Red has left me with a dilemma that I knew was coming when I started this endeavour: The desire to keep playing without the capacity to do so. I'm also wary that the last game I completed was a TBS and I'd rather mix things up than return to the genre so soon. For now I've marked it as s priority play on my spreadsheet and it will be in the mix to return to when I'm done with Pyre.

Ring of Red - Idiosyncratic, but recommended for fans of the genre

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) short blast Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Day Eight was the unplayably dated Draconus on ZX Spectrum