Gaming Round-Up: Mods, Demos, and Ashes

Feels like we’re about due for another post on odds and ends of my recent gaming not covered by other posts.

RTS mods

Finishing all those Age of Empires campaigns a few weeks back didn’t entirely quell my RTS lust, and I ended up turning to the modding community for more options.

Firstly, I did end up trying that Swedish campaign for AoE3. For fan-made, it was pretty decent, but still well below the quality of professional content, and I quickly remembered why AoE3 is my least favourite installment of the franchise, so I didn’t make it that far before losing interest.

Next, I was looking for some good PvE custom maps for Warcraft III: Reforged. The problem with that is that most of them are RPG campaigns or MOBA-like modes or otherwise radically different from the baseline Warcraft III experience, and I just… like… wanted to play more Warcraft III. A lot of mods aren’t compatible with Reforged, either, and I can’t go back to the old graphics at this point.

I did find one interesting option, though: Advanced Melee AI (AMAI) updates the skirmish AI to behave more like a real person, with more diverse strategies.

It may succeed in its goal of replicating ladder players a little too well. I got tower rushed my first game. On the plus side, it did make for a fun comeback as I eventually broke free of the choking siege.

The AI is also programmed to periodically trash-talk you, which is… something. It hasn’t thrown any racial slurs or threats of sexual violence at me, though, so we haven’t quite perfectly replicated a real gamer yet.

I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect solution to skirmishes quickly getting stale, but it definitely added some variety, and I got a good few hours of fun out of it. I’m not ruling out playing more in future, either. Still wish I could have found some proper custom campaign-style missions using the original factions, though.

A Warcraft III version of StarCraft II co-op missions is probably too much to hope for, but it doesn’t stop a man from dreaming.

Steam demos

I’ve tried out a few more Steam demos lately. Most were swiftly uninstalled and forgotten, but a few stood out.

I actually quite liked Section 13 aside from the fact it’s a roguelike. After running the first mission at least three times without beating it, I just lost patience, but I did like the art style and the humour a lot, and the combat was mostly enjoyable. I find the roguelike and soulslike trends have ruined a lot of what would otherwise been great games.

One that did make it onto my wishlist is Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Gameplay-wise it’s sort of like a low budget Skyrim, which isn’t my favourite thing, but the story was actually pretty intriguing. It’s allegedly based on Arthurian mythology, but aside from using some familiar names it’s pretty much its own thing.  The music and voice-acting were top notch, too, and I really liked the twisted visual aesthetic.

I probably wouldn’t pay full price for it, but it’s definitely something I might pick up on sale one day. I am curious to see where this story goes.

Ashes: Red Rains

I haven’t been playing physical card games as much these days, partly due to a certain degree of burnout and partly due to my ever-worsening mental health leaving me with little energy to, but I did stumble across a new (to me) game I wanted to try.

Ashes — later rebranded as Ashes Reborn and now rebranding again as Ashes Ascendancy — was originally envisioned as a competitive card game but has since added robust solo/co-op support with the Red Rains expansion line and the upcoming Ascendancy expansions. Intrigued, I picked up The Corpse of Viros, a de facto starter set for the Red Rains line.

I’ve only played one game so far, so I’m still making up my mind, but my early impression is mostly positive with a few quibbles.

The onboarding experience could have been better. The layout of the rulebook wasn’t always intuitive, and the starter deck they give you didn’t feel like it had reliable tools for dealing with all the boss’s mechanics.

The card art isn’t bad, but it isn’t amazing, either. I also would have liked some more context on the lore. There’s basically nothing on the setting, the characters you’re playing, or the boss you’re fighting. I don’t expect much story in a card game — I actually find the amount of story in something like Arkham Horror LCG a bit tiresome — but give me something.

On the other hand, I like how the resource mechanic is based on rolling a dice pool every round, which makes you adapt your strategy on the fly a bit, and the way they implemented escalating boss phases was really cool. In general it feels a bit more dynamic and less predictable than I’m used to solo card games being.

I don’t think I’m going to go all-in on this one like I did with Lord of the Rings LCG (I might have considered it if I was still at the peak of my card game obsession), but I’ll probably pick up a couple more expansions.