The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

Just played through the demo of IO Interactive’s Mini Ninjas – an enjoyable but rather short little romp through a cartoonishly rendered medieval Japan. You control a party of three different Ninjas (more in the full game) and can switch between them at will – little Hiro who can possess nearby animals and then sneak past enemy guards, Futo a big brawny fellow with more than a passing resemblance to Mr Incredible from Pixar’s The Incredibles and Suzume whom I haven’t figured out her specialty yet.

While it’s nothing particularly innovative or challenging, Mini Ninjas is surprisingly immersive and engaging – I have played the demo over and over for more than five times, mainly trying to find all the secret areas and hunt down every single artifact.

Maybe it’s the goofy character design and animation, or the silly cutscenes or simply the lightheartedness of the game or even its soothing music which keeps me playing on and on.

Watching the exaggerated motion of the enemy samurai goose-step with armor clinking as they patrol along paths in the bamboo forest or chitter “Ninja Ninja” incessantly like insects as they swarm towards you, never gets old for me

Different types of enemy samurai ensure that a little more than simple button-mashing is required if you’re going for the brute force approach. As with IO Interactive’s Hitman series and with ninjas in general, the preferred way is to rely on stealth and use force only when necessary – sneaking past enemy patrols by creeping around in tall grass is a viable option even for big bad Futo although you’re always welcome to cut the enemy at your own discretion.

More devious gamers will be delighted to find that there are more fancy tricks at your disposal for every situation. You can sprinkle caltrops as a gift for pursuing samurai when you’re feeling nasty or you can always switch to Hiro and use his Spirit Form spell to sneak past enemy strongpoints as a harmless chicken to avoid shedding blood (especially your own ).

I guess Mini Ninjas won’t last long judging from the length and linearity of the demo but it’s a blast while it lasts (hey, it rhymes )

Download the demo and other goodies (click on the Castle to download wallpapers) at the official Mini Ninjas website.

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Shinobido Imashime Opening Movie
Katakijin – Stylish Ninja Hack n’ Slash Game
Ninja Rinseout
Makibishi Comic – Japanese Point &Click Flash Adventure
Ninja Gaiden 2 Official Wallpapers

While it has been confirmed that Mount & Blade will get a graphical upgrade with HDR, FSAA and other fancy effects like depth of field, soft particles and tone mapping in the upcoming Warband expansion, current players of Mount & Blade can easily improve the visual quality of the existing game simply by downloading and installing an unofficial mod.

Zaro‘s very excellent and aptly titled Graphical Enhancement Mod (currently version 2.51) allows players to battle in a more beautifully rendered Calradia. Follow the instructions in this thread at the Taleworlds forum to get the most of this mod and then gaze at the lush grassy plains and much more realistic trees until the cows come home (or at least until the nearest Swadian knight charges over and gives you a good whack over the head with his morningstar). There are also replacement textures for the castle and town walls which makes these fortifications look suitably formidable and imposing.

Download Zaro’s Graphical Enhancement Mod from the Mount & Blade Unofficial Repository followed by a little patch to bring it to version 2.5.1 (for best results, remember to follow these configuration instructions). It works perfectly on my current Mount & Blade installation patched to version 1.011 but nevertheless, it’s always good practice to backup your Mount & Blade folder before installing new textures.

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IGWB (I) – Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade Wallpapers
Legion of Man Demo Impressions
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1066 – the year Duke William of Normandy was crowned King of England after successfully invading and defeating the English led by King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings on the 14th of October that year. Vikings commanded by King Harald Hardrada of Norway had landed in northern England a month earlier and gained a foothold there after crushing the outnumbered forces of Earls Morcar and Edwin during the Battle of Fulford. The English later defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Stamford Bridge but had to quickly march southwards after that battle in an attempt to repel the Norman invasion and the exhausted state of the English army has often been cited as the major factor for the eventual Norman victory.

The Vikings

The English

The Normans

All three battles are playable in this wonderfully animated game developed by Preloaded for British TV network Channel 4. The single player campaign places the player in control of all three factions – the Vikings at the Battle of Fulford, the English at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and finally, the Normans at the Battle of Hastings. The Vikings excel in ferocious charges, the English form steady shieldwalls while the Normans are the medieval equivalent of a combined arms force. Alternatively, the game can be played in skirmish and multiplayer modes which are handy for simulating hypothetical scenarios with different army setups.

A combination of strategy, tactics and a trio of mini-games awaits in 1066 and yes, those mini-games will essentially decide the fate of the British Isles.

Before a battle, each side summons their warriors to battle via a points system similiar to tabletop miniatures games. The sight of warriors flocking to your banner as you add them to your army is a glorious thing indeed.

After choosing your warriors, deploy them on the battlefield taking into consideration the forces arrayed againist you as well as impassible locations on the map which will offer advantages for defensive moves during the actual battle.

Each turn, both sides plan their orders and then the orders are executed simultaneously in an arbitrary manner. Thus, two units may charge each other while trying to move to more favourable positions or an infantry unit may have rushed forward in an attempt to charge only to find that their target has withdrawn from range.

The tactical portion of 1066 involves maneuvering your units into formations for bonuses. Outflanking isolated units by moving two units above and below it is a great technique to rout shaken units off the battlefield with minimal loss of lives.

Three infantry units arranged in a vertical row will lock their shields together to form a shieldwall which confers additional defensive bonuses and is particularly useful for withstanding a cavalry charge.

Boar snouts are formed by moving three infantry units into a wedge formation and coupling this formation together with a charge into enemy lines can be very devastating to unprepared or wavering units.

Careful thought must be put in the movement of each melee unit as the two armies close in – charging with its substantial shock damage is very important and can only occur when a fair distance separates the two opposing units (indicated by a red arrow instead of the usual white arrow when moving the unit).

When the two sides eventually clash, melees are resolved between individual units one at a time. Melee damage is calculated by how accurately you press the cursor keys as they appear on the screen (akin to rhythm games like Beatmania) while the effectiveness of your archers is strictly determined by your skill in gauging the correct angle and power needed to release a hail of arrows directly onto the heads on your enemies. It’s always amusing to watch inept enemy archers fire into the backs of their own infantry until you commit the same mistake or fire indiscriminately into a swirling melee and wound more of your troops than the enemy’s.

Taunting and calling your enemy names can be a very effective tactic in a hard-fought battle since a series of perfectly-executed taunts can quickly knock down enemy morale and rout units with already flagging morale. It all depends on your typing speed though

Hmm … Foxbeard … not sure my morale would drop if someone called me that

Thus, while you may be a superb tactician, your reflexes must be equally as good to win most battles since they often involve close fights between two evenly-matched forces of roughly similiar numbers (which means more mini-games). For the reflex-challenged, I recommend playing at the lower difficulty levels since they offer a better test of your strategical and tactical abilities without overly demanding that you perform very well in the mini-games.

Play 1066. Thanks to g4g.it for featuring this game on their site, wouldn’t have found it otherwise.

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Lessons from BBC History Channel Games – The Battle of Hastings
War and Game – Military History Blog

King’s Bounty : Armored Princess is an expansion pack to the 2008 remake of the original King’s Bounty which was the inspiration the Heroes of Might & Magic series.

© Katauri Interactive / 1C Company

For this expansion (a weird name,if you ask me), we have wallpapers of the titular Princess Amelie who’s pretty, not exactly well-armored and is apparently single and has a Nordic temper (interesting details but do we really need to know all that?) If yes, head on down to the English site where there’s more information about the game but is unfortunately missing the wallpapers.

Download King’s Bounty : Armored Princess wallpapers from the official Russian site.

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Crush The Castle(s) with a Mighty Trebuchet
Heroes of Annihilated Empires Demo Impressions
The (Draconic) Art of Kerem Beyit
Crusaders – Thy Kingdom Come Wallpapers
Replaying the Original Majesty Demo

The counterweight trebuchet was one of the most awe-inspiring siege machines of the medieval age (or the one of the most fearsome, depending on which side you happened to be)

Its range and power may pale in comparision to the gunpowder artillery that rendered it obsolete – advances in gunpowder and artillery design resulted in the infamous Paris Gun of WWI which fired 94 kg shells out to a range of 130 km – but a trebuchet’s ability to hurl 100+ kg rocks, diseased cattle and other projectiles at or over the walls of an enemy castle 270 metres away was mightly impressive for its time.

Inspired by Liam Bowmers’s Castle Clout, Armor Games’ Crush the Castle offers you the chance to tear down 24 different castles with a wonderfully animated trebuchet recreated in loving detail. Artwork in this game is supplied by Chris Condon of Con-Artist Productions (The Last Stand, Warfare 1917, etc)

The first few “castles” are questionably designed – I’m certain that medieval lords did not build their castles on stilts like this one here.

This masochistic lord probably wanted a superior vantage point to better witness his own (literal) downfall, I guess

Besieging a shabby wooden stockade complete with three beautiful princesses in Crush The Castle? How unchivalrous

It’s a delight to watch the physics kick in as stones (and later, primitive bombs) from your trebuchet make solid hits on the weak points on the castle causing the entire shoddy structure to crumble and collapse like a house of cards. And no, Crush the Castle isn’t meant as a history lesson – castles back then definitely didn’t topple over by themselves even when hit by the huge projectiles fired from an even more massive trebuchet and neither did they build castles this badly

Behind the comic facade of silly lords falling to their death from their grandoise but obviously unstable fortifications, there are several good puzzle-like designs in here – particularly a couple where the wrong shots would bring down half the castle but trap the remaining characters beneath multiple collapsed pillars of wood and stone, while simultaneously protecting them from your projectiles.

Once you have destroyed all 24 strongholds, you can create your own castles and then test their defensive strength with the built-in level editor.

Overall, Crush the Castle is a wonderful little timekiller – nothing to complain about there except for the fact that you only get five shots to take out all the inhabitants of the castle, be they haughty royalty or loyal knights and men-at-arms. Why anyone would take the trouble to erect a powerful trebuchet only to fire only five rocks is beyond my comprehension – must be the fickle pettyiness of those feudal times.

Play Crush The Castle.

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Papercraft Trebuchet Plans by Sheila Mertens
800mm Dora Railgun
War and Game – Military History Blog
A Simulation of Trench Warfare : Warfare 1917