Might & Magic: Heroes VII vs Vaporum: Lockdown
Might & Magic: Heroes VII
Might & Magic: Heroes VII is the latest (and perhaps most disappointing) installment of the classic turn-based RPG series, Might & Magic. It's not that the gameplay is horridly bad - it's actually somewhat the opposite. Many fans have liked the variety this installment has brought, especially the six different faction campaigns that you can enjoy, each with their own stories and landscapes of course. This game also has a nice, low-key empire building aspect where you'll manage your city, gather resources and recruit extra armies to help you take down your enemies. The synergy between the heroes and their armies is well-designed too, and not to mention, the game has a nice skirmish mode where you can simply test your skills against an AI whereby both of you are given maximum power.However, all those aside, Might & Magic: Heroes VII is possibly one of the buggiest games ever made for the franchise. The game crashes pretty often and the bugs, although rarely game-breaking, are incredibly annoying. The multiplayer mode is also practically non-existant mainly because it doesn't even work. Worst yet, the developers apparently have given up trying to fix the game and left the game almost as broken as the day it was released.
So, considering all of that, we really couldn't recommend getting Might & Magic: Heroes VII unless you can get it at a "way below market price" range or you'll just end up regretting all the wasted money.
Vaporum: Lockdown
Vaporum: Lockdown is a first-person, dungeon crawler featuring old-school grid-based dungeon-crawling gameplay with real-time combat, fun Sokoban-like puzzles, cool steampunk-themed setting, and an intriguing mystery to uncover. In this game, you play as a scientist, Ellie, who’s trapped within a locked-down facility called the Arx Vaporum filled with murderous robots and mutated creatures. Will Ellie be able to escape the place in one piece? What will she discover as she makes her way through Arx Vaporum?In terms of gameplay, you’ll be moving Ellie, the protagonist of the story, one grid at a time. Turning to face a certain direction before you can say turn a corner also requires an extra tap of the keyboard. However, this also means that you can actually move like a crab in this game if you’re sure of the path you’re on. Like most dungeon crawlers, Vaporum: Lockdown comes with devious traps, enemies and puzzles. Traps in this game can be rather easily avoided as long as you got the timing down right.
The interesting part about this game is that combat plays out in real-time here, unlike any other old-school dungeon crawlers we have experienced before. This means that it is entirely possible to loop a sequence of “move and attack” when facing something stationary so you can avoid getting hit at all. However, this also means that more mobile enemies can be trickier to slay – it all boils down to timing really.
There are also fun Sokoban-like puzzles in this game. Most of them involve having you to move crates around to fill holes in the ground, block danger from the path you want to take, or even to serve as paperweights on metal pressure plates. For hardcore treasure seekers, the game even has several hidden compartments that an inquisitive explorer might be able to find, each of these alcoves usually come with some nice rewards. There is a sufficient variety of loot, and you can get better gear as you progress.
Being a prequel of the highly-successful Vaporum, Vaporum: Lockdown definitely does the original game, and the Vaporum universe as a while, proud. Besides the few new features here and there, the gameplay is generally similar to the original title and hence, would be instantly familiar to fans of Vaporum. The storytelling here is great as well, offering so much more lore than before, and of course, the fantastic atmosphere here will pull you right into the fumium-obsessed world that Ellie Teller lives in.