Liberation Army - Shooter/Strategy Game Hybrid

Liberation Army is the Gundam game for gamers on a budget. While, it's a bit dated, I don't think this game gets the attention that it deserves compared to other freeware titles like Warning Forever. It's a real-time-strategy/shooting game hybrid that plays like a 2D Dynasty Warriors clone. This game also reminds me of an old dos shareware game called Gladiator. You control a single unit while leading an entire army of humanoid mechs that look distinctly like mobile suits and engage an opposing army on a 2D battle map.

The gameplay is divided into the preparation and combat phase. During the preparation phase, you are shown the map of the next battle showing your formation as opposed to the enemies. You can buy upgrades for your allies, technology, new units, ships and choose the mobile suit pilot who will participate in battle. You can also customize your pilot's mobile suit by changing/adding/upgrading his/her equipment. In the combat phase, you control your own unit while having the ability to issue commands to your allies. Going rambo straight into a swarm of enemy fighters is the fastest way to get killed, thus, if you're thinking of showing off your Seed Mode or Newtype shooting skills, the game punishes you severely. Zooming straight into enemy territory makes it easier for enemy fighters to land critical hits by shooting you from behind. While your own unit is considerably tougher than normal units (with stronger upgrades), and is equipped with one sub weapon of your choice(even includes the beam saber... though it's kinda hard to use without taking damage), it does not have the ability to take down the entire opposing army all by itself. If you find yourself in a corner of the screen surrounded by enemy units with no allies in range, you'd best retreat to save your pilot from suffering too heavy damage to fight in the next battle.

Umm... this is what happens when you try flying in solo. The one being focus-fired on near the upper-left of the screen is me

Your territory grows in percentage as indicated in the preparation phase every time you win a battle by either making the enemy retreat or destroying all enemy units onscreen. The focus of the game is on slowly gaining ground and destroying enemy ships that deploy more enemy units while keeping your own ships protected. As your territory increases, the difficulty level also increases, with elite enemy mobile suits equal to your own joining the battle, each equipped with their own special subweapons. Luckily, you also earn powerful allies called escorts with their own special weaponry depending on the number of battles you've participated in. That aside, the AI for your escorts is not very good at dodging enemy bullets nor as powerful as the special enemy units, so you'd best not rely on them too much.

The battles seem to go on forever as I've yet to reach anything that indicates that there's an ending to this game. This gives Liberation Army a high replay value but unfortunately, after the novelty has worn off, it can get a bit repetitive.
The graphics are nothing special but work well enough for this type of game. Up to 600 units can fight onscreen at once, which effectively gives you the feeling of being inside a great gundam or macross type war. There's also a variety of midi tracks included in the game and you can manually replace them with your favorite mech-anime theme if you want. Surprisingly, the character art is a bit subpar for a japanese anime-type game as I've noticed that some of the facial proportions on the character portraits are a bit off. Luckily, it's not too noticeable and is not something that will distract you from having fun with this game.

The version of Liberation Army reviewed here is freeware visit the author's homepage here.
http://www.infoseek.livedoor.net/~koushi_okada/

The game has been completely translated into English by Aeon Genesis
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=libarmy

The Sight of Autumn - Original English Kinetic Novel

This is an Original English Language Visual Novel and technically not a game, so to dispel any prejudice you might have, please read this before continuing: http://www.fleurdelis.com/desiderata.htm I'm a bit biased regarding this "game" because it's in the genre that I prefer.

All done? Good. The Sight of Autumn is a non-branching visual novel in 3 chapters (meaning linear story with no choices) made in flash. The story is about a protagonist who is slowly losing his sight both literally and figuratively speaking and his fated meeting with a blind female counselor. The story is told in the contemporary first-person present-tense style from the protagonist's perspective.

From the introductory logo, it's easy to see that the author put a lot of effort into his creation. I won't mince too many words on this VN nor write a detailed review, since in my opinion, it doesn't deserve that kind of treatment of being analyzed and taken apart piece by piece like some uninspired research paper. While being in essence a semi-animated short story, from the exposition and style of writing, one can tell that this is a very emotional piece meant to impart an experience. This experience should be very different for each individual.

While the individual elements are far from perfect, the art works well for this VN and even features some limited animation.The music is near-professional in quality and has a sad, nostalgic feel to it. I love the instrumental and vocal versions of the main theme. Some might compare this work to japanese doujin such as Narcissu and Red Shift, and while it cannot match up to them in terms of professionalism, the indefinable cathartic quality of The Sight of Autumn does not pale in comparison.

Read this free VN with an open heart.
Download Page http://www.renai.us/game/autumn.shtml
Author's Homepage http://www.eltania.net/m12/

Hmm... oh yah, allow me to shamelessly plug some of my own works here. I'm kinda partial to TSOA because the author's style is very similar to mine.
http://www.renai.us/game/wings.shtml
http://www.renai.us/game/hikariRibbon.shtml
Please read some of the other VN's by Radical Dreamers 2002 on the archives too ^_^. I'm nearly finished on my latest one right now. http://www.renai.us

Twin Seeds DX - Tohou Style Vertical Shooter

This is a cute vertical shooter with some catchy tunes and tough boss battles. This is basically danmaku with cute characters where the focus is more on stylish bullet dodging and grazing rather than shooting down your enemies. You know the drill, dodge if you can, bomb when in a pinch. In fact, You can also focus shoot to slow down your character for precision dodging and increased damage but at the cost of your score. Each stage features a 3D scrolling landscape with 2D characters and unique boss battles, each with their own special abilities. There are four levels of difficulty (been a while since I played so this might not be accurate) but all of them are actually quite hard once you reach level 4, which is as far as I can get in this game, because of the way the bullet patterns swarm in on you until you have no place left to dodge. You can continue from the level where you last died even after you exit the game.

This game is freeware, so you can download it from the author's homepage http://www.geocities.jp/pooytwo/

Also, there's another game on the same page, KagaMI, but it seems to be a beta right now.

Idinaloq - Commercial Quality Vertical Shooter

More screenshots plus downloads for the game here:

Game Homepage
http://www.namikaze.org

Ah! Idinaloq! A game that I'd recommend more for its aesthetic appeal rather than the actual gameplay which is actually quite bland. Featured prominently on freeware gaming sites a few years ago; the controls are a bit sluggish and the collision detection is unforgiving. However, you do get unlimited continues, so you can beat this game at any level of play and there's at least 1 unlockable character. Just expect to die a lot if you're more used to the dodge-fest of danmaku games like Tohou Mountain of Faith.

This game is total eye-candy. The anime-style characters are professionally drawn, the 3D graphics (though a bit dated) look stunning, and this is about the only freeware game I know that comes with it's own vocal opening theme complete with a fmv sequence.

Over-all this is game is more of a collectors download for occasional play rather than anything else.