In Steve Hogarty’s latest premature evaluation, he ascertained that it’s totally worth simulating accurate battles in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. One question, though, was left unacceptably ignored.
How many hobbits does> it take to kill a mammoth?
This week, a series of gifs enticed me to take a look at Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, a game that looks like what might happen if the cast of Morph decided to start doing medieval reenactments. Amusing as it looked with its googly eyes and shonky physics, I'll admit I came to it with a hefty dose of scepticism - the term simulator often being synonymous with 'a bit rubbish'.
I mean no disrespect to the Farming Simulators or hardcore flight sims of this world, of course - I'm talking about the stripe of games like Goat Simulator that rely on being just the right side of broken and hoping the one gag remains funny for longer than ten minutes (many of them struggle).
By contrast, there's just about enough of a game to Totally Accurate Battle Simulator's absurd campaign to lift it clear of the competition. While it's hardly going to replace Total War any time soon, there's something compelling about its mission structure; one which presents you with the enemy ranks and grants you a set number of points with which to purchase and field an opposing force. As with any strategy game, picking your units carefully is the key to success, only in this instance you find yourself asking how many mammoths you want to field, or whether a large unit of halflings is preferable to a smaller force of farmers.
Back at PC Zone magazine, where I was born out of an egg, it was my job to take the raw copy submitted by our freelance writers, strip out most of the sexism and veiled threats against politicians, and produce a polished and well structured review that was legally fit for publication. One of the most commonly deleted and cliched introductions to any game about a war (which was almost every game back then) went as thus. War, huh? What is it good for? Well, this game for a start>. If you ve never read those words in that order before, send a thank you card to your nearest editor today.
I can still picture the freelancer s wide-eyes and self-satisfied grin as they smashed the enter key, confident that they had just invented a cool and original way to begin a review about wars. Bam! Now there s> an opening line, they would say, half laughing to themselves in disbelief that the very first thought that occured to them could be so brilliant, so perfect. Then they would lean back in their chair and run their hands through their hair like Christian Bale having just done a murder. I know this because I was that writer, once. Asking what war is good for and then saying it s the game you re writing about is a rite of passage for any games journalist, like finding out that you re not allowed to use the words gameplay or visceral , even when you re talking about guts spilling out.
As this is my penultimate edition of Steam Charts, before I return to nuzzle into the warm infinite belly of Horace for all of time, I thought it might be fun to take a bit of a look behind the scenes of Steam Charts, to see how this weekly column comes together.
So, hey, join me as we step behind the curtain, and learn a little bit about the magic of Rock Paper Shotgun.
As I mentioned on the PC Gamer Show this week (video above, and full show here on YouTube) I have completely fallen for the King in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. It's a game about goofy, physics-based combat between two armies made up of various units. In the campaign levels you have a restricted budget to spend on units to overcome a (typically) stronger army.
But in sandbox mode you can build whatever armies you want and pit them against one another. With all that freedom and all those units at my disposal, I've only been doing one thing: placing a single medieval King on the field and making him fight everything all by himself.
Why do I love the King? Why do I restrict myself to using him and only him? Here is why, in a single goddamn clip that you need to turn the sound on for.
He's a tall, goofy fellow with a huge sword and he strides around making regal gibberish proclamations. He's also a damn tank. See him get hit with multiple boulders? Notice how they basically break his arms so they're stuck behind him. See how he still stabs the catapult to death with both arms bent behind his back?
That's why I love the King. That's why he is the King.
Hail to the King, baby.
Here he is taking on a couple dozen hobbits. Granted, hobbits (halflings) are the very definition of fodder. They're useful in the game for slowing down other units because they stick to them, as you'll see below. The King doesn't quit, though, even after he loses his royal footing and all but disappears in the mob of Brandybucks, Boffins, Bolgers, and Bracegirdles.
Grand and mighty as the King is, he's not invulnerable. He can shrug off a few catapulted boulders, but a ballista (giant-ass crossbow) will immediately put him out for the count. Sharp projectiles, in general, spell demise for the King, but in the case of arrows and spears he can take a number of them to the royal torso and keep on fighting.
Just not forever. Missing a few swings of the sword didn't help, either, but that can happen when you've got a spear lodged in your elbow.
But that's a King for you, simply too proud to carry a shield. And hearty enough to take on Zeus. Yeah, Zeus is in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, because this is a game about total accuracy.
I do like Zeus a lot too, he's got a swagger I enjoy and he's ruthless against mobs, chaining lightning strikes together than can take down entire lines of infantry. But this is no squire or knight he's fighting. It's the King.
Perhaps my favorite example of how tough my King is can be seen below when he takes on two Viking longboats. Granted, the longboats aren't in their element, being on land and everything, but the Vikings aren't shy about riding them while they're carried and thrown by their mates.
The King has two boats thrown on top of him and lies there, crushed beneath the weight of both. And he still keeps slashing away with Excalibur, wiping one poor dude off the map with just one swing while lying on his back under a buncha damn boats! When he finally works his way free his arms are all jacked up (again—I think inbreeding in the royal family make have resulted in weakened joints) but he keeps fighting.
There are ways to make the King even more powerful—priest units will follow him around using divine magic to protect him, which would probably give him the edge he needs to take on spear-hurlers and archers and ballistas.
But I like making the King go out there by himself. Leading by example. Being a one-man army. Hail to the King.
