This time round, it’s no longer the vicious meatgrinder that Warfare 1917 was with its murderous frontal assaults. Flanking maneuvers are now possible since your troops can advance along one of three zones and mutually support friendly squads in adjacent zones. Therefore, while advancing down the centre is advantageous for support troops like mortar and machinegun teams as they can provide covering fire to other units in the centre or on either flank, they can also be quickly overwhelmed as enemy squads can attack and kill them from any zone.

The objectives have also been expanded to reflect the more fluid combat and small unit tactics of WWII. While it’s still possible to win by bleeding the enemy dry until they surrender ala WWI, the skilful deployment and maneuvering of troops past the ends of the top and bottom flanks will deplete enemy morale much more quickly than bloody frontal assaults and save more lives on your side as well. Of course, taking the objective by charging down the usually heavily-defended centre is also a viable victory condition, but usually at a heavier cost in lives and this will adversely affect the amount of XP you get for upgrading your forces after the battle.

Panzer!

While heavily armed and armoured, tanks aren’t invulnerable and have to be supported by infantry to prevent enemy anti-tank teams from closing in with their bazookas or panzerfausts.

However, even with three different zones to slug it out, stalemates sometimes occur in spite of both sides adding the heavy firepower from tanks and mortar teams into the fray. To break the deadlock, officers can be deployed to call in heavier fire support in the form of strafing fighter-bombers or artillery barrages with sufficient supply points and the proper upgrades.

No anti-tank units at hand? A lucky direct hit from an artillery barrage will knock out a tank

Speaking of upgrades, they function identically to Warfare 1917 – they consist of improvements to your infantry or unlock additional equipment (e.g grenades and support options) and you never get enough to unlock all improvements before the end of a campaign (8 missions each for the Americans and Germans). The two sides play with a slight difference due to several variations in their upgrades – the Americans focus primarily on speed while the Germans concentrate on raw defensive power.

Tactically, Warfare 1944 is a much more interesting and engaging affair than its predecessor due to the brilliant inclusion of flanking attacks and additional winning conditions. The addition of different difficulty levels in version 1.1 is a major plus too, since you wouldn’t be seeing screenshots of victorious German soldiers here

All is not perfect though and one major gripe I have with Warfare is the randomness of tank-vs-tank combat. It’s definitely realistic that the turret-mounted machinegun and main cannon of a tank can be individually destroyed but it really sucks when you spend 800 supply points for a tank and its main gun gets busted by a lucky first shot from an enemy tank And if it happens that you have no bazooka or panzerfaust teams nearby, that single enemy tank is gonna roll over any of your infantry squads unfortunate enough to get in the way.

The other (small) letdown is a rare bug where multiple enemy squads hog a single fighting position and mow down anything in range. Chris reports on his blog that it’s being fixed at the moment though

Now that Warfare 1944 is out, I wonder if there’re plans for a third game in the series – maybe we’ll see asymmetric warfare in the steaming jungles of Vietnam?

Play Warfare 1944 or check out Chris Condon’s blog at www.conartistgames.com.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
IGWB (III) – Firefight – WWII Infantry Tactics Simulator
A Simulation of Trench Warfare : Warfare 1917
British Commemorative Booklets for World War II
War and Game – Military History Blog
WWII Anti-Submarine Warfare Tactical Lessons from BBC

© EA / Bioware

Next up, we have some lavish artwork in the form of movie-style posters starring the lovely shapeshifting witch Morrigan and a mean-looking ogre. Come to think of it, games are like movies nowadays with celebrity producers / game designers and the like.

© EA / Bioware

Last but not least, a preview of some of the other posters up for download, including a poster of an uncharacteristically violent and ungraceful Elvish lady below.

© EA / Bioware

Download these wallpapers and posters from Bioware’s Dragon Age website.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
The (Draconic) Art of Kerem Beyit
Fantasy Art – Paizo Style!
Dragon Fellow (Movie + Lyrics)
Magical Orchestral Score, Wallpapers & More from Blue Dragon Fansite Kit
Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning Illustrations & Concept Art

Walking octopi from Metal Slug aside, Mars does have a variety of weird fauna from spinning heads that eerily resemble Crash Bandicoot’s and even the catlike Qoo from the similarly named range of drinks from Cola-Cola.

These hostile Martians will appear and attempt to ravage the colony unless we humans start building towers to defend ourselves – that’s right, it’s another tower defense game again but Mars TD has a couple of neat gimmicks that sets it apart from other games of the genre.

The attributes of each tower from top to bottom : Level, Exp, Attack Strength, Attack Speed and Unknown (sorry!). The buttons from top to bottom are : Upgrade, Move and Sell

When a tower blows an alien to bits, it gains both experience and credits – I guess it’s probably the gunners in it who gain experience since the concept of inanimate towers gaining exp on their own is rather freaky With sufficient experience, towers will automatically level up on their own. Towers with more experience are also cheaper to upgrade than untrained towers – especially the more advanced towers (I have seen a total of five different types as of writing)

Towers with yellow, orange and red arrows are progressively cheaper to upgrade

There’s also an ability to switch the positions of towers which is free between stages but will cost you when you move them around during each stage. Walls can be built if you need to move a tower to an unoccupied spot, which is a handy tactic when you have insufficient credits to build actual towers but want to implement a more in-depth defensive strategy by shifting them around.

At the end of the day, it’s still tower defense but it’s tactically challenging (read : super hard) and addictive as hell. The 8 bit feel is a plus in my book too – huge pixels, garish colours, bleepy soundtrack and outlandish critters complete the surrealistic effect Mars TD has on the senses.

Play Mars TD at mogera.jp. (there’s also a review at JayIsGames where I saw this).

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
More Tower Defense Flash Games : Onslaught 2 & VectorTD
Retro Tactical Warfare in Nectaris for Windows
OpenTyrian – The Best DOS Shoot’em Up – Now for Windows XP/Vista and Other OSes
The Last Stand & The Endless Zombie Rampage & Crimsonland

© Barunson Interactive

Obviously I’m not going to try it anytime soon since I really don’t need another extra addiction to tie me to the computer Dragonica does have some nice wallpapers and concepts downloadable from the official European website by gPotato. There’s also a fan site kit up at the Southeast Asian website by IAHGames (which I can’t download because it’s up at Megaupload).

© Barunson Interactive

Download these Dragonica wallpapers and artworks or try your luck getting the fansite kit off dragonica.iahgames.com.

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Korean MMORPG Wallpapers (X) – Tera Online
Project Coo! Wallpapers
Luminous Arc 2 Wallpapers
Warrior Epic Concept Art and Wallpapers
Archaic Sealed Heat Wallpapers

Simply enter the URL to your desired webpages or RSS feed at www.zinepal.com, hit the I’m done! Create My Zine! button and that’s basically it – quick and fuss-free.

Check out Zinepal.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
Exporting and Converting Bookmarks with Bookmark Buddy
Fun with Batch Files – Converting PDFs to TXTs
Wikibooks, WikiType & PDF Wikis
She Asked … How To Combine PDFs

Discovered John Cooney’s I Love Traffic off Armor Games’ official blog back in April this year – a a short 20-level puzzler combining elements of twitch gaming, quick thinking, pattern matching and estimation skills. I Love Traffic is refreshingly addictive for a game that contains no violence and has a soothingly pleasant colour palette to boot.

Inadequate allocation and (occassionally) criminally-neglient misplacment await you in each level as you control ALL the traffic lights in an attempt to prevent congestion while maintaining a perfect 0% accident rate at the same time.

One of the more sensible road designs

By controlling when each traffic light change from red to green and vice versa, you’ll attempt to squeeze as many vehicles across one or more junctions with every change of the traffic lights to beat the time limit and complete each level. If you think that juggling multiple traffic lights and atrocious road designs was already bad enough, the random appearance of speeding police cars, slow-moving buses and long trailers will definitely drive you bonkers. But then again, there’s nothing like seeing a lumbering trailer clear the junction moments before a police car streaks past.

The first ten levels are essentially confidence-building exercises – later levels especially the final level will really test your estimation skills and multi-tasking skills.

Play I Love Traffic at Armor Games or check out John’s other games.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Drivey – Relaxing Screensaver
Bus Driver Demo Review
Russ Schwenkler (dangeruss) – Vexel & 3D Cars and Motorcycle Art
BMW Art Cars

© 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 passage below from Chapter 6 Support from The Sea, Air and Land from the Kevin Dockery’s Navy SEALs – A History Part II : The Vietnam Years brought my attention to the Broncos of Light Attack Squadron Four (VAL-4) “Black Ponies” which were one of two Navy air support options for the SEALs udring the Vietnam War, the other being the “Seawolves” of Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron Three (HA(L)-3).

Flying small propeller-driven OV-10 Bronco aircraft, the handful of Black Ponies in the skies above the Mekong Delta could loiter on-site for hours. And when a target was available, the Black Ponies could swoop in with unbelievable firepower for their size. Rockets, both 2.75-inch and 5-inch Zunis, would roar out from under the wings of the Black Ponies and blast huge holes in the jungle, or in the enemy formations underneath. Cannon fire from 20mm guns and bullets from 7.62mm machine guns would rip through the ground that had been torn up by the rockets…

Photo displaying the Bronco’s impressive weapon loadout from Captain Donald J. Florko’s article To Ride A Black Pony used without permission from www.blackpony.org.

The story of the conception and development of this fascinating aircraft can be found at the website of Colonel KP Rice (USMC, Retired) who served as the Department of Defense Program Manager for the OV-10 and is now showcasing his flying car Volante as a viable form of private aviation.

Read more about the OV-10 Bronco at the unofficial association page for the men who served in VAL-4 “Black Ponies” at www.blackpony.org and Volante Aircraft.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Preview of Air Combat Manoeuvres
CIA A-12
John Wallin Liberto’s WWII Military Aviation Art
Fighting High – WWII Allied Aviation E-Magazine

For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, there’s also a video demo of Alchemy by Andrew “Android” Jones (more here) recorded at the Digital Conference of Creative Elite (DCCE) in Shanghai.

While I’m no artist, Alchemy feels very different from any drawing or painting application I’ve played around before as it doesn’t try to fully emulate the traditional drawing and painting tools and process (try and find the Undo button ). You can simply use Alchemy to sketch and draw but its beauty lies in its ability to quickly inject randomness into your ideas through a variety of create modules which are essentially shape and line generators. Applying one or more alter modules which further process and add effects to your input allows you to realize your imagination on digital canvas in a lot of different and interesting ways.

The above was done in 2 minutes by someone with zero artistic skills (namely me) and Alchemy with the Pull Shapes and Mirror modules Amazing, isn’t it?

My first attempt with Alchemy to draw an Ork Warboss from Warhammer 40,000

While Alchemy is still in alpha, you can try it out by visiting and registering at www.al.chemy.org. Alchemy is currently available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Android Jones – Musical Art & Much More
Fun Drawing Tools For The Masses
Create Your Own Graffiti Masterpiece with Graffiti Studio 2.0

First off, players familiar with good old Windows Solitaire will immediately feel at home in Faerie Solitaire. You see, unlike Fairway Solitaire where the underlying golf theme is closely tied into all aspects of the game, Faerie Solitaire definitely feels closer to an actual game of Solitaire albeit with a deck of cards adorned with fantasy illustrations. While this might suggest that Faerie Solitaire is inferior graphically and gameplay-wise, these differences actually work in Faerie Solitaire’s favour when it comes to really casual players like my mom (who still has difficulty relating pars and golf scores to their actual effect on each hand in Fairway Solitaire). The less cluttered screen also makes for faster gameplay which is why I much prefer Faerie Solitaire since I can blaze through 9 hands in under 10 minutes

Now, the gameplay in Faerie Solitaire is very similiar to Fairway Solitaire but it would be most unfair to dismiss Faerie Solitaire as a mere clone. The biggest difference between the two games apart from the obviously different graphical theme and sound effects would be the extra elements that carry over game after game in Faerie Solitaire to provide some continuity and replayability in what would otherwise be a series of Solitaire games.

You still have something similiar to Fairway Solitaire where you can buy optional game-enhancing items but there is now an extra incentive to continue playing each stage not only to unlock the next stage and advance the story. You see, Faerie Solitaire rewards long-term players with a selection of 32 little critters you can encounter and collect in your journey to save the faeries. It might seem a relatively minor addition but it does alleviate a lot of that repetitive feeling when there’s a (very small) chance to acquire a new creature in each hand that you play – and believe me, you can easily play over a hundred hands in a single hour

While the critters are an interesting diversion, the fact that they do not add any special abilities to your gameplay seems to be a rather superficial feature at best. Perhaps in a sequel

Overall, an interesting twist on the solitaire genre which will appeal to players who are looking for an addictive card game that’s simple to learn and play. The lovingly illustrated cards (I love the swamp lizards on the 6s) and the dreamy background music add a sparkly magical experience without overly distracting the player from the actual card game.

Download the demo for Faerie Solitaire from www.subsoap.com. The full version is now available for purchased at Big Fish Games at a promo price of 6.99 USD.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Fairway Solitaire
She Asked … for a Bejewelled Clone
Giga Rensya Mini-Games Part II
Giga Rensya Mini Games Part I
Mytheria – Virtual CCG