Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Game Review: Fields of Battle for Fire TV

I love the Fire TV. I have a bare minimum cable tv package, and Kodi's addons have given me access to live and archived shows and movies. I also have it pointed to my NAS for local movies.

When it first came out, Amazon wanted gaming to be an important factor for the device. They released their own branded controller and showcased Sev Zero at the intro.

Since its launch, though, there aren't that many good games for it. Sev Zero is intriguing but then becomes tedious unless you have a Goose on a tablet while you Maverick your way through the aliens.

Recently I installed Fields of Battle, a free paintball FPS. More games like this would keep boosting the AFTV as a serious gaming alternative, supplanting Ouya and the Shield. NBA 2K15 lacks a season mode, so I'll wait for it to be on sale before I buy it.
I don't know how to take screen shots from the FTV, so this brief review will be a wall of text.

The game originally came out for android / Fire HD tablets, with the wonky on-screen controls found in FPS tablet games. The AFTV port makes great use of the Amazon controller, and is probably applicable to those using Xbox or PS controllers. Both joysticks are used intuitively and the R2 trigger is the... trigger... for your weapon.

You have a choice of 5-8 scenarios at any given time. The types of game-modes are elimination, capture the flag, and point capture (king of the hill). The venues and game-modes rotate through the day, opening and closing based on a clock connected to each one. The majority of the courses are enjoyable enough, but some modes suit better to certain venues. Venues include the classic outdoor inflatable obstacle courses, uphill mountains, outdoor scattered-debris-and-popup-building plots, an office building, a gas refinery, and an office building.
When you choose your mode, you enter that contest (different from a match) against other players. Unfortunately there is no true multiplayer, you play each game with and against AI, and your score goes up against what the guy in Vietnam or Maine is doing on his end for the same contest. At the end of each game, you get thrown to the contest page where you can see how the other guys are doing, and you can enter a new game immediately to keep scoring against those guys. Each game either ends due to the flag being captured, or after a time limit of typically 2 minutes
At the end of the time limit for the selected contest (usually 5 minutes), you get ranked against the other guys who were playing the same contest. The top three get silver coins.

The in-game currency is silver coins, which you earn by playing contests. There are gold coins which are purchased with real money. With silver coins, you work on getting better or different guns and clothes. I haven't spent a real dollar, and have an adequate variety of guns. I don't have any grenades because I was unaware they were a premium item.

The AI, however, is surprisingly well done. At first I thought I really was playing against real humans, since they didn't have dead-on accuracy and never saw me if I snuck up behind them. When I finally figured out how to play well, I realized that there was no way other humans would be entering the same game at the same time I hit "enter." You don't join a game in progress, it always starts fresh.
The AI is aggressive, but lacks some of the Leroy Jenkins-banzai-kamikaze types found in real life.

Overall, this is a game anyone with a controller connected to their AFTV should have. I have almost achieved the max level, and I'll always out-score people using their tablets because having a physical controller makes a giant difference. I hope to get 30 days of game time out of it before I get tired.

Hopefully by then a good flight sim will come out. It probably won't come out, but I can dream. Maybe someone can port X-Wing Fighter onto AFTV, or Castle Wolfenstein. I'm holding out for a live multiplayer free game.

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