Because I had to fix a bunch of posts on here due to the transition from Wordpress to Hugo, I was reminded that I wrote a bunch of posts when Civilization IV came out 20 years ago. With the massive changes to the game mechanics in Civilization VII I thought I would at least make a post about my initial impressions of Civilization VII.
Unlike last year I didn’t play any of my narrative games, despite my best intentions. Unlike with my end of the year music post I don’t usually make graphs for my end of the year video game posts, but if I did you would see that games 1-3 were played WAY more than any other other games I played this year. It was truly the year of Against the Storm, Cities: Skylines II, and Balatro. I don’t know too much about what 2025 will bring, but I am sure it’ll at least have a bit more of each of those three games. I would like to actually make a bigger effort to get through my narrative games this year, but I’m not sure how much that desire is worth when I consider that I didn’t play any at all in 2024. As usual, you can enjoy the YouTube video below that will have highlights of the games I played this year along with narration that matches the text below. After that are the images of my Steam Year in Review and, finally, my Top 20 overall games since 2011.
I’ve been working on Milford County for quite some time - nearly a year at this point. I was inspired by the way that City Planner Plays designs his “cities” in Cities: Skylines and Cities: Skylines II; he makes regions that eventually become a megalopolis rather than simply designing one city. While I did orignally start out trying to think of things in story terms as he does, I am not quite disciplined enough to do that. However, I do think that building regionally is one way to end up with more natural looking cities rather than just having a gridded city. Milford County is starting to reach the level of development where I will start merging areas, so I wanted to do a small tour of the region as-is. First off, here is the region from above. I couldn’t figure out how to get the camera to zoom out far enough, so this is from the normal game view with the tools cropped out. (In hindsight I think I could have probably played with the camera settings to zoom out)
After all these years, there’s finally a Humble Bundle that redeems keys to GOG! I don’t have anything against Steam, per se, but I always hated the lack of diversity of locations to redeem your keys. I’m hoping this eventually means that games sold on Humble Bundle through their store (ie not part of a Bundle) will be redeemable on the user’s preferred store.
I came across this video that’s a pretty in-depth history of video game controller that taught me quite a bit I didn’t know and helped bridge some connections between the different companies throughout the industry’s history.
In my 2022 year-end blog post, I thought I was going to focus more on finishing up the narrative video games I started in the prior years. I definitely made some good progress on Disco Elysium, but not nearly as much as I wanted. I didn’t finish any of the narrative games. In January, I didn’t play any video games as I worked on my end of the year blog posts. In February I got re-obsessed with Monster Train and spent a good chunk of my free time trying to unlock all the boss characters. In March and April I tried to get a little more consistent about my gaming and also started trying to take advantage of all the extra buttons in the gaming mouse that Dan got me for Christmas. In June we took a bunch of family vacations and so I got back into Gwent, which I could play on my phone and my non-gaming laptop. In July I was back to Monster Train. In August, as the advertising hype started picking up on Cities: Skylines II, I started spending a lot of time playing the original game. Once the game came out in October, I spent nearly all of the next two months playing it. Then, out of nowhere, I heard just enough about Against the Storm to buy it and it was all I could do, almost to the exclusion of all else.
I’m all-in on 8bitDo. Prior to getting on the 8bitDo train, I was mainly focused on PC gaming, so I would get Xbox controllers (whatever the latest was at the time). But with 8bitDo supporting PC, Switch, Android, and (I think) the Xbox and PS4/5 with addaptors - it’s a no-brainer to go with 8bitDo, especially since you can choose the form factor most comfy to you - PS/Switch Style with the Pro or Xbox style with the Ultimate.
A video version of a large chunk of this blog post
1. Gwent (1 day, 5:50:44): Around May I found out that CD Projekt Red had changed the rules around the Gwent Journey, so that journeys were no longer time-bound. This meant I no longer felt pressured to play every day in order to progress. Freed from feeling forced to play, I once again caught the Gwent bug and, as you can see, it became my most-played game. The addiction was also facilitated by playing on my phone (although that time is not captured here). Eventually, around September, I had to stop when the heft of the phone was giving me RSI issues. I had moved on to other games on my PC, so I took a break from Gwent. The developers announced that the game only has one more update coming, so we’ll see if the community around the game remains. That will dictate how much I continue to play Gwent because, after all, a multiplayer game is no fun if there isn’t anyone to play with. I expect I’ll get readdicted some time in 2023. ( Last year 23 minutes)
This year I played a LOT less; partly because I wasn’t home as much as I was in 2020 due to the COVID mitigations. Also, it was partly because I focused on programming with older Advent of Code challenges. Last year I wanted to make a list of games and go in order, but that fell apart when I got stuck on The Witcher 2 and stopped following the list. First up, a video of the games I played this year. Second, the text version of what I said in the video. Right before my Game of the Year selection, a graph of this year’s gameplay.
Ever since a class during my undergrad which mentioned technology that can help make sure the real world is accessible to all folks no matter what their physical limits may be, I’ve been very interested in the topic. It’s led to my interest on web accessibility (although I’m not always perfect when it comes to this blog) as well as in other realms. One of my favorite series from the Game Maker’s Toolkit Youtube channel is his yearly wrap-up on how accessible games were that year. Here is his 2020 video:
Because the pandemic left me at home for a couple months, this year I played about double the amount of games from my previous record. You can watch the video below or read the text below that to find out what I thought of the games I played this year and which game I named as my 2020 Game of the Year.
Gwent (73 hours 24 minutes): Other than playing the beta a few years ago, the last time I played a CCG was Magic the Gathering back in the mid-1990s. I had no idea I would end up so addicted to this game for the first half of 2020. Eventually what took me away from the game is the fact that to maximize your experience with the game, you have to play every day. And I just have so many other games I want to play, books I want to read, the kids and wife to hang out with. I couldn’t give that much to a game. I do still have it on my rotation, so I get to it now and again. When I play, I find it quite fun, so I think Gwent will be with me for a while.
As I mentioned last year in my 2019 in Programming post, I created a bunch of 2D games in Unity by following along with the Gamedev.tv classes. I would watch the videos on Linux and jump over to my Windows computer for the programming, learning how to use SourceTree and Microsoft Video Studio in the process. But for some reason, going back and forth with the KVM when running Unity would sometimes freeze up the Windows computer. So when I saw someone on Fedora Planet running Unity Hub, I thought I’d see if there was a Flatpak - and there IS! Also, I’ve fallen in love with JetBrain’s Pycharm, so I thought I’d go ahead and use their game dev IDE, Rider. ( There’s a Flatpak for that, too!) So, let’s see how well this works!
This year I’ve added some narration to the video which is duplicated below for the hearing impaired. Below all that you’ll find my favorite video game of 2019!!
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Stardew Valley: I was a big fan of Harvest Moon when it came out on the GameCube. My future wife and I spent way more time than we should have playing it instead of studying in college. When Stardew Valley first came out, it piqued my interest. Maybe it could scratch the same itch. But I was busy at the time so I put it off until this year when it was on Sale. I immediately loved the trip back to SNES-era graphics and the love and care that ConcernedApe obviously put into the game. As I advanced in the game, each new level of skills brought new fun to the game. It’s pretty easy to see why it has such a dedicated fan-base on its subreddit. I will say that I’m a little surprised when I see people on the subreddit who have farms that are way past year 3. There’s definitely a lot to do in Stardew Valley, but the biggest reason I haven’t finished (get to the end of year 2) is because I’ve reached a point where I essentially have infinite money and nothing else I truly want to buy - it’s the same thing that ended up killing Harvest Moon for my wife. Now, I *do* understand the replayability factor - there are many reasons for that, including the fact that there are 4 or 5 different maps which require different farm strategies. I hope sometime in 2020 to “finish” the game and maybe in late 2020 to start a new farm.
The sixth, and final, game of the Udemy class on Unity 2D was a tileset Metroid-Vania game which the instructors named Tilevania. I never played Metroid and maybe only played Castlevania once, but its legacy does persist in some newer games like Spelunky.
Tilevania in the Unity UI
This was the closest I’ve come to making a Mario clone. My favorite part of the development process was creating the tile editor rules that allows me to drag around the tiles for the foreground and have it automatically determine if it should be a grass piece, dark, or full of rocks. As usual with the games we used to learn concepts for the course, there is a lot left to do to make a fully-fledged game. I made note of a few items in the tickets on the Github page.
We learned a lot of techniques and reinforced even more, but the biggest thing I learned was how to do Sprite Sheet animation. Having done bone-based animation in Blender years ago, I have to say that in comparison, sprite sheet animation is easy-peasy. The tradeoff is less flexibility - you only have what your artist drew (or you bought or got for free online), but it essentially automates everything about animation.
The fourth game we worked on was another game that I spent a lot of my childhood playing. We made a Galaxian/Galaga clone:
Laser Defender - a Galaga Galaxian clone
My mom’s youngest brother had a Nintendo and lots of arcade ports. When I was young he lived in the condo above my grandmother’s condo and whenever we’d go visit her, I’d ask if I could visit him so we could play games. The game I loved playing the most there was Galaga because of the frantic pace.
My journey through 2D game development using the Unity engine continued with our third project: a clone of Brick Breaker or Arkanoid. In case you’ve never seen it before, this is Arkanoid:
Arkanoid
It’s got a pretty important legacy, Breakout, the version that Atari created, was an important stepping stone for the two Steves of Apple (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak).
So it makes sense that this would be one of the games we would use on our learning journey. This is what my first level looks like:
I’ve been playing video games since I was somewhere around 5 or 6 years old and got a Nintendo Entertainment System for my birthday from one of my aunts. I also inherited a Tandy computer from my dad when I was younger. We had a bunch of edutainment games - like this Sesame Street game (that unfortunately a quick search on Google Images does not turn up) where you had to suck the Tweedles (bugs from Ernie’s flower box) to solve math problems. I also, and I’ve mentioned this before in several places on the net, learned to program from a book on BASIC and made myself a bunch of simple games, including Madlibs clones.
In 2018 I played a little more than double the amount of video games as I did in 2017. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, now that the twins are older I don’t have to watch them as diligently. I can’t be as off-hands as I was when it was just Scarlett at this age, but I can spend a little more time on my hobbies. Second, a pretty good chunk of that time (15 hours) was spent playing video games with Scarlett so it just took the place of other potential Father/Daughter projects. That said, with me bouncing around various hobbies, it doesn’t matter that I have more free time now because of the kids getting older because I’m splitting it over more tasks. As I write this I’ve really gotten back into programming. It’s all I think about in the pool and whenever I’m not doing it. So much so that I’m 3.5 months behind on organizing and editing my photos. This bouncing around between hobbies is something I’ve documented many times on this blog. It happened a lot throughout the year so there were times where I’d play games for tons of days in a row and then not play video games (other than my Civ VI multiplayer turns) for months. I’d legitimately forgotten about having played some of these games until I went back to compile the list for the year.
Scarlett drew this back in September when the kids were playing a lot of Spelunky. It’s interesting to see which parts of the game imprinted on her mind.
It was a pretty busy year for me in 2017 as I got more into cooking as the twins got older and I didn’t have as much time to myself. I felt I hadn’t nearly played as many games in 2016. But when I started gathering the stats, that’s when I realized just how much less I’d played. In 1016 I’d played 132 hours of video games compared to only 42 hours in 2017. And over half of that was in Civilization VI - once again proving to me that it’s the one game that’s worth spending my money on as I’ll always go back to it. Just writing this makes me itch to get back to the game.
Things are busier now, especially as the weather warms up and we begin to do more outside, so I’m switching from keeping track monthly to doing so quarterly.
What a year for gaming. I tried to take advantage whenever I could to get a chance to game and I was able to do a nice mix of newer and older games. I also made a bit of a dent in the list of games I got as part of a Humble Bundle. Well, let’s get into it.
Another five years passed and so and so another entry in the civilization franchise was released. This time they made what is probably the biggest change in the series thus far, they exploded the cities out onto multiple tiles. That really revamped the planning and for once I couldn’t just make every city make all the same improvements. I’ve enjoyed it and hope to get more time with it in 2017.
The latest iteration of this series I’ve been playing for the past 25 years was released and the changes have made the game more dynamic and, for the first time in the series, have really made it so that I can’t just do the same thing every game because of how much the terrain makes a difference. It’s been neat and with the reduced gameplay over the past two months, it’s displaced all over games.
Civilization III (15 minutes)
It came a bit later than I wanted it to, but I started playing Civ III in an attempt to play Civs III-VI between the end of September and the end of October when Civ VI comes out. (Unless things went horribly awry, it should be out by the time this post is published)
I decided to play a little more and work on creating an overlay that allows the game to be full screen while also still presenting my Extra Life information. After a of couple tries, I like where it ended up.
I thought this was just going to be a quick Eric Checks Out, but it turned out to get me really addicted to the point where I wish I was playing it every night before bed. Of all the rogue-likes I’ve played, I feel like this one gets the best mix of allowing you to die without it hurting too much.
I started off playing the same multi-player games we’ve been playing for years now. Then I heard Civ VI comes out this year and so that inspired me to play a solo game.
I just wanted to test how well it would work on my Linux computer with Steam Big Picture. For some weird reason, it didn’t work with the Xbox controller despite the fact that I was able to use the controller with Big Picture and with Poker Night 2 (at least when streaming from the Windows computer). It worked OK with the keyboard. Strangely the mouse was a bit offset from where it was clicking.
Proving the worth of Let’s Play videos to anyone on the publishing side who still doesn’t believe, when Dan first told me about Spelunky! it didn’t sound like something I’d enjoy. When I got around to watching Dan’s Let’s Play videos, I decided it was indeed something I’d enjoy. Five hours later….I’m still enjoying it - mostly because of the endless variety that comes from the walls that are constantly shifting.
By the time I was done with February I was nearly done with XCOM: Enemy Within. It was a fun revisit of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but I think I’m done for a while. That’s a good thing since I hear that XCOM 2 has some beefy PC and graphics card requirements.
A quick thank you to the developers of OBS for adding the latest features in OBS Multiplatform 0.13.1. It was already a great platform, but with Studio Mode and video sources starting anew when going to a scene, it is near perfect for my use. All this by volunteers and for all three major OS platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux! It is now extremely competitive against XSplit and competition among software devs always leads to better stuff for users!
Because I’ve staggered the publishing of new videos on Youtube, not all of them may be visible on the embeds in this blog post on the day it goes live. For example, I think I created 14 videos for Torchlight in January, but at the moment only 11 are live.
Torchlight (23 hours):
I decide to check out this spiritual successor to Diablo, having never played Diablo. It is a nice game to play after stressful day - just clicking on bad guys and traveling around without much thought.
One of the great things about Steam and the internet is the cloud save. It means that you can go from computer to computer and, as long as it’s connected to the Internet, you can pick up your game where you left off. In my case, I have a Windows computer and a Linux computer both capable of running games from Steam. I wanted to see how well XCOM was ported to Linux so I launched it and didn’t have any of my saves! It turns out that the saves are in a folder called SaveData on Windows and savedata on Linux. (In the path: ~/.local/share/feral-interactive/XCOM/XEW - remove XEW if it’s not Enemy Within) Those aren’t the same thing in Linux. So you need to delete the folder savedata and then make a symlink to SaveData where the symlink is savedata. Once you do that it works perfectly. To give credit where it’s due, here’s the forum post where I fond the info.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that all the digital stores would move in this direction, but I was surprised to see that GOG has come out with their version of Greenlight: Games in Development.
At least I can get Greenlight-quality games with DRM-free and if it completely sucks, I can get a refund.
I used to have a Team Fortress 2 server on CentOS 6 with Virtual Box. Now that I’m using KVM/QEMU/Libvirt, I wanted to set up a new one. Also, Valve somewhat changed how they worked a few years ago and I wanted a clean slate. I started with a VM with 40GB. It’s not supposed to take that much, but I remember last time it took much more than the 10GB I’d given the VM and I don’t want to have to increase the disk size again.
2015 turned out to be an incredible year for videos games for me. That’s a good thing because I was playing for the Extra Life charity to raise money for Johns Hopkins. I’d heard about it when the Giant Bomb guys spoke about it, but this year I had a reason - Johns Hopkins had saved Scarlett’s life twice! I’d experimented with recording myself playing video games when Dan started his Let’s Plays and used Camtasia. But there was no way I could justify paying $100 to record myself playing games. Then I discovered OBS which was, in typical FLOSS fashion, impossible to figure out. But then I found XSplit which had recently gone to having a freemium model. Once I learned what all the terminology was in XSplit I was able to go back to OBS - which I did because they actually catered to Linux in addition to Windows. The most fun moments have been when people have stepped into my Twitch or Youtube Gaming channels and chatted during the game. It brings back the social aspect that I grew up with back before everyone had internet.
I wanted to finish XCOM: Enemy Unknown before 2015 was over and I succeeded. Despite being screwed over by scripting errors in the big “dungeons”, I had a lot of fun with the game. The ending was slightly anti-climactic, but then again, this game only had the barest of storylines. I’d DEFINITELY play it again….once I finished going through the hundred or so unplayed games I already own.
There are many times that The Giant Bombcast or other video game podcasts have led me to discover games I wouldn’t have otherwise considered: Peggle, Saint’s Row the Third, Assassin’s Creed, and The Witcher. But there was one time they did me wrong: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. They made it sound like it was just an exercise in frustration in which you died at every turn and it since it was made by Firaxis, I thought it was just going to look like Civ. Nothing wrong with that, but I already had Civ. But Dan got an extra copy at some point and gifted me this one. It’s been a blast and I’ve loved playing it even as it has started to kick my butt as the difficulty ramps up. If I had more time, I’d be playing this game A LOT.
I’m a seasonal Team Fortress 2 player. Although I play it here and there at any time of year, I tend to really play a lot during October for the special Halloween missions. This year Valve was busy working on a new mode that was released earlier this week so they released a community-made Halloween mode: Invasion. It’s the first time I’ve spent any money since I spent $2.50 to get a bigger backpack a few years ago. Overall, the new modes were a lot of fun and I’m glad that Valve has gone from what should be the basic level of video game company support- supporting community mods- to allowing the best of the best to make money by sharing in the profits made during community events.
Yeah, so the first video I recorded in September is missing the video game footage. Whoops! Either way, I finished The Witcher this month. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, this is another game I tried thanks to the Giant Bomb guys - specifically Vinnie. I thought the game was overall a lot of fun. I feel like the throughline of the story could probably have been done a little better. Even before I spent a couple months away from the game, I was only tenuously connected to how my actions were leading to anything being done other than being against the Salamandra. Still, the story was neat and the twist at the end was pretty crazy in a good way. I look forward to The Witcher 2, but I probably won’t get to it until 2016 due to some family stuff coming up over the next few months.
I’ve been dreaming (no foolin’) about this for two or more years now - having one computer running Linux with a Windows VM for gaming when there aren’t Linux ports. Less hardware overhead for me. But until now VMs haven’t been able to gain native use of the graphics card. This guy figured out how to do it and it’s great. I’m likely going to do this next time I do a CPU/Motherboard refresh.
The Witcher (3 hours): Finally had some time to get back to The Witcher. It definitely isn’t the type of game where you want to have long gaps between playthroughs. But there isn’t much I can do about it.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (30 minutes): Scarlett just asked me if we could play Sonic. So we tried to get past the third world for a while, but I kept slipping up.
I still love the innovation coming out of Valve (like their VR and controller work), but today I listened to the Beastcast Episode 2 and saw that Steam is implementing game refunds. This is something GOG has offered for quite some time now. It appears that GOG is starting to eat Valve’s lunch as it’s getting more Triple A games DRM-Free! I have no issues with Valve and I don’t consider them evil or anything hyperbolic, but here’s how healthy competition helps. Now Valve has to match GOG for refunds just as GOG has had to create GOG Galaxy to match the Steam client. I hope they continue to challenge each other in the market and create a good environment for us that is pro-consumer since digital has been anti-consumer for so long. (DRM, games/books/movies/etc being pulled without notice)
Yesterday I put in for the GOG Galaxy Beta and today I got my invite. I couldn’t wait to get home to see it in action. I did not bury the lead, it was exactly as I state in the title, A Good First Start. The settings are so minimal at this point that it doesn’t have any tabs:
GOG Galaxy - Settings
As you can see, many of the most exciting features are marked as coming soon. Still, it’s exactly as I hoped they’d do it. I meant to remark in my last blog post that I hoped they’d make the game pages just like their webpages. I find their webpages very, very useful. It’s less cluttered than Steam and brings the reviews to the fore. Let’s take a quick screenshot tour of the client. (I was going to do a screen capture video, but the client is so simple at this point that a few screenshots will do it justice)
If I mentioned it on this site, I wasn’t able to find it in a search because of the generic word, but I was very annoyed and pretty upset about EA’s Origin store and platform. Part of what I enjoy so much about playing PC games is that the only limitations on what you can run are based on OS and the power of your hardware. In the console world there are games exclusive to Playstation or Xbox and for the non-exclusive games I have to figure out (if I’m planning to game socially) which platform my friends and family are going to buy the game on. For PC games that’s not an issue. All games run on Windows and a greater and greater number run on Linux and OSX. Usually, no matter the OS, everyone can play together online.
Although I didn’t play as much on average, I did take advantage of one weekend to do a mini marathon in my Extra Life playing. It led to my biggest donation yet!
The Witcher (17 hours)
I’m still having fun playing this game, mostly due to the great dialogue writing. I’m at a point in the game where the main quest has narrowed to one path and it’s a little boring with their enforced seeming passage of time where I have to leave and then come back when someone says “I need to think about this”. There isn’t any real indication of when I’m supposed to go back. I’m itching for the story to pick up a bit.
Assassin’s Creed was the first game series Vinnie of Giant Bomb convinced me to try by talking about it endlessly on the Bombcast. The Witcher is the second. (This is why I miss his voice on that podcast so much) It has turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would. It’s based on the Bioware engine of the time, so it plays a lot like Mass Effect 1. The story is good so far and full of nice little jokes. You can watch my progress (I’ve been recording it for Extra Life) on this Youtube playlist.
Civilization V (30 minutes) - We got a few turns in our multiplayer games, but other important things (like planning weddings, perhaps) have kept my brothers from sending me new turns.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ (38 minutes) - I got it as part of a Humble Bundle because eventually my PS3 will die or be remotely disabled. As I have just transferred my Steam library to a new hard drive (more about that in a future post), I’m more confident in my ability to be able to play these games for a long time. Played a bit on the last day of Februrary to test my new Xbox 360 for Windows controller. It’s still as much fun as I remembered.
Civilization: Beyond Earth (7 hrs): This game was a great evolution on Civ V. I enjoyed that they continued with the same sense of humor. I also thought they did a good job evolving things so that it felt different enough. It’ll probably take a few games before I get the hang of all the government options.
Super Mario Galaxy (1 hr): Just wanted to get past the opening section on my emulator so I could not have to repeat that silly story section again if I even want to play some SMG. Also wanted to test the USB sensor Dan got me for Christmas.
This year I did not play as many new games as in previous years. I was deep in my graduate degree and most of my free time was during work travel. Since I don’t have a powerful laptop (and Steam on Linux was just taking off early on this year anyway), most of that time was spent reading. Still, I did play some great games and still managed to log in quite a few hours.
Poker Night 2 (2 hrs) - Played with Danielle thanks to Steam in-house streaming. Also played alone to unlock some more skins.
Xenogears (1 hr) - After having wanted to play this for around 15 years, finally started. So far my best friend is getting married, I was raised by the Elder, and people fight with found ancient tech giant robots. The anime cutscenes are well animated, but the voice acting is flatter than a mathematical plane.
Civilization V (1 hr) - Dan, Dave, and I didn’t play too much because life got in the way and then the GMR servers went offline. We hope to play some more in the following month.
Poker Night 2 (30 minutes) - Testing out Steam’s internal streaming from Windows to Linux.
I still really love using Linux, but I don’t follow the Linux press like I used to. I’ve settled into a comfortable zone where I only follow Fedora and KDE news since that’s what I use. But I followed it very closely for nearly 10 years. Every year there’d be multiple articles asking whether this was the year of the Linux desktop, meaning people would finally see the Microsoft hegemony for what it was and throw off the shackles of proprietary software. It never came. Thanks to Ubuntu and Vista, we almost got there. Then there were the Netbooks, but the manufacturers chose horrible versions of Linux and underpowered machines and Microsoft came out with Windows 7 starter edition. And people went to Macs instead of Linux in the biggest tech comeback of … ever.
So…I doubt I’ll be getting a PS4 or any next gen system. I could get by with a Roku (or Google or Amazon or whoever streaming stick) and a laptop to stream my Steam games (if I want to play them on the big screen).
I noticed Dan was on my borders right when I started having the Cho Ku Nu, my special unit. Having played civ and RTS games with Dan, I figured it was strike or be struck. So I went to war. Unfortunately, Dan fights better than AI and because of the terrain features, it became a war of attrition that favored Dan. After a stalemate war, I offered peace and Dan accepted.
Poker Night 2 (3 hrs): Before going on my recent business trip I wanted to take a small break from school work so I played PN2 the night before my trip. I reached the point where I’ve heard all the in-game dialogue so many times that I don’t even listen any more. I can generally last a while, but I wasn’t able to win any tournaments. I usually got knocked out by the last man standing.
Civilization V (7 hrs): Met Dan in Mesa Bros; Waiting in Lefties Game
May:
Civilization V (11 hrs): More of the multiplayer games.
June:
Civ V (3 hrs): More multiplayer games.
Super Meat Boy (30 min): I played a few levels until it began to get too hard for me. It is a very well-designed game, but I was never that good at platformers. Really, I just stuck to Mario and Sonic growing up. The others were often too hard for me; at times even Mario and Sonic were too much. I don’t think I ever beat a Sonic game although with one of them (3 or S&K) I used to always get to the final Robotnick.
Only Civ this month as I’ve been focused on my semester work.
Civ V ( 29 hrs):
Mesa Bros:
It was my oldest game that didn’t yet have any war, but Germany broke the peace. In general, my style seems to be OK with AI warfare. Usually I can ramp up my units quickly enough to stave them off until they exhaust their units while I build up my army. However, I’ve noticed a slightly higher aggression rate in Civilization V compared to previous Civ games so I’ve started trying to keep my unit counts high enough that most civs won’t spontaneously attack me. Didn’t work with the Germans, but after rebuffing their first advance, I may be able to steal a city. Especially since right after they attacked I was able to upgrade my catapults to trebuchets. We’ll see how this goes because at a theoretical max of 30 turns per month (usually because of our schedules I can’t do more than one turn per day and some days we miss turns), I may or may not have finished attacking the first city before April’s up.
Skip to 28 seconds in. Sure, there are way too many Super Mario Brothers covers, but that theme is amazing as is seeing this performance of the theme on an ancient Chinese hyper flute. The instrument looks like something out of a science fiction movie.
Dido tried to be opportunistic and attack me while I was at war with the Celts. Now she is facing my wrath. I will not stop until she has been wiped off the map.
[caption id=“attachment_7750” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Poker Night 2[/caption]
Poker Night 2 (8 hrs) - I find Poker Night 2 to be a bit harder than the original. Not sure if they upped the AI or changed anything about it, but I find it a lot harder to win Texas Hold ‘Em in PN2. Luckily, this game also includes Omaha Hold ‘Em and I have been doing a lot better with that game. While I enjoy Samson, I find the Banter to be a little lacking compared to the original. I think the developers did a better job of defining the player’s relationships with each other in the previous game and that led to somewhat better banter. Still, it’s fun to play Poker without worrying about real money and it’s a lot of fun so I’ll probably put some more time into the game later in the year.
[caption id=“attachment_7243” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V - against Dave - Fighting Barbarians at the Gates - 2620 BC[/caption]
Civilization V (48.5 hrs): As is usually the case, spent a ton of time with Civilization this year. Played about 3.5 hours less than last year, but had way more fun by playing with Dan and Dave. Things have gone a little slower recently because we’ve all been away for the holidays, but I actually feel like there’s a good chance of us finishing the game. At least the one I have with Dave which is much further along.
Civilization 5 (5 hours): Still haven’t caught up on the blog posts. Still entirely consists of games with Dan and Dave. Dan gifted me the latest expansion pack during the Winter Steam Sale, so I may fire up a solo game. Time will tell - I still have a ton of indie games from Humble Bundles and even games Dan gave me for my birthday last year like LA Noire.
Skullgirls (<1hr): This game is a ridiculous fighting game that doesn’t take itself too seriously when it comes to the story. It’s a return to the fun of fighting games of the 1990s. At the same time, the mechanics of gameplay are no joke - we’ve been in a fighting game renaissance for the past five years or so and this game does not ignore that. I played it during a Steam free weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had the time to dedicate to a fighting game, I’d buy it in an instant. If you enjoy games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but think they’re a bit too self-serious, this game should definitely be checked out. Also, if you’re into anime (and I think there’s a lot of overlap between these groups), there’s a lot of poking fun at tropes of both fighting games an anime.
[caption id=“attachment_7503” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Back to the Future: The Video Game - The Pseudonym Fun of the series continues[/caption]
Back to the Future: The Video Games (5 hrs) - As is the usual situation with these types of games, I figured out I had to get to the 1920s about 2 hours before I had triggered the right series of events that would allow me to get there. Got to see the sense of humor of the writers as I ended up meeting the high school principle’s sister who’s just as crotchety as he is. Apparently Doc is in trouble for starting a fire. Other than that I don’t know much as I wasn’t able to play very much of the game beyond the first 1920s scene with the principle’s sister.
Civilization V (8 hours) - Keep following the tags ( Civ V: Lefties and Civ V: Mesa Bros ) or check out my Saturday posts (although this week I didn’t have one)
LIMBO (3 hours) - Here is my review of the game up to what I finished in September:
The order in which I play games is sometimes a little unnecessarily complicated. I’m often balancing many different variables when determining the next game to play. This time it was the fact that I wanted to listen to the LIMBO soundtrack. I’d obtained it as part of the Humble Bundle that gave me the game and because soundtracks can sometimes spoil plot elements, I didn’t want to listen to it until I’d played the game. The rest of this review will contain spoilers. The game is about 3 years old now, but if you want to play this game, go play it before you read anything about it.
[caption id=“attachment_7342” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civ 5 - Against Dave - Choosing Meritocracy[/caption]
Once again we made a choice to go with a new guiding principle in our governance. This time it was Meritocracy. By rewarding those who do the best work, our citizens become happier.
[caption id=“attachment_7347” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civ 5 - Against Dave - Trade Route[/caption]
If I may step out of the fictional narrative mode I’ve been using for a few weeks now, I have to say that it’s a shame these two games are my first Civ games in somewhere between 6 months and a year. Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to my brain for the first half dozen or so turns in which I wondered what in the world this Chinese-specfic building the “Paper Maker” was. Although, in my recollection, Civ IV also had the Cho Ku Nu for the Chinese Unit, it had Pagodas or some other either cultural or happiness producing building. It was only after being annoyed for Civ V not allowing me to see what it does while loading (I thought one of the older Civ games did allow you to hover over the special units and buildings to see what they do) that I went onto the Civ V Wikia during my lunch break. To quote the Bluth family, “I’ve made a huge mistake.” It’s meant to give the Chinese a huge early science boost that would help me not only combat the fact that I’m up in the arid north, but also would help me get a head start on Wonders. (I never have problems with Wonders when I’m only playing with AI, but my brothers often make it to the Wonders before me) Luckily for me, the game in which I have the biggest challenge - Dan and Dave - is also the slowest-going. So I’ve wasted less turns doing the wrong thing in that game than I have in the game with Dave.
[caption id=“attachment_7211” align=“aligncenter” width=“493”] Civilization 5 - against Dave - people from ancient ruins join the Chinese Empire - 3220 BC[/caption]
One of the ancient ruins explored by our soldiers had a group of uncivilized survivors. Seeing the awesome nature of our forces convinced them it would be in their best interest to join the Chinese Empire. Their extra labor was quite welcome.
[caption id=“attachment_7110” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V game against Dave - 4000 BC[/caption]
Civilization V (31 hrs) - I’ve been playing with Dan and Dave via Giant Multiplayer Robot. You can follow posts about the game with Dave here. You can follow the posts about the game with Dan and Dave here. There will be a long overlap between those two, however, the one with Dave started a few weeks earlier and should finish earlier.
[caption id=“attachment_7159” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization 5 against Dave - 3460 BC - Ancient Ruins[/caption]
The first group of warriors we went out have reported back to me that they have found some ancient ruins. I have instructed them to search these ruins in the hopes that they will find the secrets of an ancient civilization or perhaps the remnants of some ancient civilization that may wish to join the Glorious Chinese Empire. These ruins are within a dense forest so it is no wonder they have been lost to time. The timber should prove useful as the empire grows. We have begun preparations for expanding the empire to a second city, but with how amazing our Empire is, it will take a while to have all the supplies ready. In the meanwhile we continue to explore this land.
[caption id=“attachment_7140” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V against Dave - 3700 BC[/caption]
As I continue exploring, I discover that I have a City-State to the South. That’s going to put a damper on my expansion south unless I destroy them. Also, if they end up best buds with someone else that’s an enemy on my doorstep. They may be the first casualty of living near the Great Chinese Empire! I’m now beating Dave by one point! Yes! Even when I play on my own, I tend to use the last turn to queue up all my production so I don’t have to remember what my plans were. That’s extra important when I’m playing 1-2 turns per day. So I finally got around to that in this game.
[caption id=“attachment_7124” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V game against Dave - 3760[/caption]
I had my KVM set to the wrong computer so I accidentally fortified my warrior on the first turn. I didn’t realize this when the second turn started (getting used to playing hot seat) so he sat around for a turn. I started moving him around and discovered that I seem to be in a resource-rich area. This is good for me in the early game as the marble will allow me to build some buildings more quickly and the gold (bottom left of the screenshot) will allow me to build more buildings before I go into debt. The dyes will be good in the mid-early game by helping my citizens be happier and giving me something to potentially trade with the AIs. I think I know where I want to put my next city, but it’s going to be quite some time before I can do that, unless my production picks up when my city grows. Speaking of that, my city will reach a size 2 population in one turn, woohoo! I assume Dave’s in a higher-growth area and that’s why he has a higher score than me - either that or he has a civilization with a high culture rate and has already expanded the culture zone around his city.
Ever since the play by email (PBEM) feature in Civilization IV, I’ve tried to play multiplayer games with my brothers. It’s pretty ridiculous in this day and age that Civilization has Nintendo-level abysmal support for asynchronous play. The games often take 40 hours to complete solo and even longer when playing live so asynchronous play is the only way that makes sense to play a game.
This time around there’s a website called Giant Multiplayer Robot to handle passing the files around. Before I’d run a program with Civ IV to make it work more easily than emailing the games around, but GMR makes it extremely easy. You just install its client and authenticate with Steam. Then it lets you know when you have a turn to play.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (4 hrs) - I finally started playing Ass:Rev nearly 7 months after I got it as a gift. I’d been putting off playing it because it’s a lot easier for me to play computer games at night than it is to play with the Playstation at night. I was able to play 2 two hour sessions over two subsequent weekends. I’m….just not quite as into Assassin’s Creed as I was after completing Brotherhood. The gameplay and story elements were a huge jump from the first to the second installment. Even Brotherhood brought along the new play style involving your recruited assassins. Revelations just isn’t quite as innovative. It’s not a huge shock since the series was annualized; there was no way for Ubisoft to continue the pace of innovation. Still, the story of Abstergo and how the Templars were affecting everything in society was a fun tale. I loved solving the puzzles in AC2 and Brotherhood that had such creepy moments as when someone called about seeing his vitals in his cable channels and then his implied death.
Costume Quest (7 hours) - I completed the main Costume Quest and then continued on to the DLC. The game continued to be charming and I enjoyed playing it as well as the simple story arc of the brother and sister realizing they didn’t hate each other that much. Gameplay-wise the game is not too forgiving when you make a mistake. There aren’t any items to use for healing so any mistakes in the Mario RPG-like mechanics (hitting a button on a certain timing to empower your attack or reduce an attack against you) could lead to losing an encounter quite quickly. I think it took me about 5-8 tries on the final boss of the main game to get just the right combination of add-ons (which increase HP or allow you to retaliate when hit) and costumes to make it through to the end. It also doesn’t help that the enemies appear to level up with you. That is to say, if there’s enemy X at the beginning of the game and you come up against him later, he has more HP and hits harder. That’s a bit different than the mechanic used in most of the Squaresoft RPG games I played in my youth. That said, there aren’t really any consequences to losing a fight. As far as I can tell, you don’t even lose candy when you lose a fight. You just end up right where you were before and you have another chance to start the encounter again or move away to change the costume equipped.
Quantum Conundrum (3 hrs) - I started playing the game early this year. I really, really enjoy this game, but the imprecision of the moves really bugs me. I’ve been playing it with a keyboard and mouse, does anyone know if it plays better with a control? I keep dying because I go too far in my jumps and it’s annoying when I’ve figured out the puzzle but keep dying because of platforming issues. In other words, when I play Sudoku I don’t fail because my pen lands in the wrong box when I try to write a number. The thrill of the game is solving the puzzles. I enjoy teasers and, while I admit I sometimes have to use a guide to solve the puzzle, I always try really hard to see if I’ve considered all the possible ways to use the game’s elements to solve the puzzle. I don’t know if the game is evenly balanced, but I think there are three halls and I’ve finished one of them. But I spent around 30 minutes of of the three hours this month trying to get through a puzzle I’d solved but I kept falling to my death. So I put completion of the game on hold to play other games. I may not ever finish this one. We’ll see.
[caption id=“attachment_6344” align=“alignleft” width=“478”] Chell from Portal[/caption]
Gender is a pretty interesting concept when it comes to video games. Putting aside “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, video games are unique in that the players are active in constructing the narrative. Some games, like puzzle games don’t REALLY have a narrative (but that doesn’t mean my brothers and I didn’t come up with the “story” behind what was going on in Tetris - paragraph seven) But the rest have stories and put the play on a spectrum from games like Mario to games like Mass Effect and all the way to the The Sims franchise in which you have complete control of the narrative through player agency over all the characters in the house. (See here, here, and here) As the player plays, the player takes the character’s story onto him or herself. This is at least partially the rational for the dearth of female protagonists. Everyone “knows” that not only are all the gamers male, but they also couldn’t stand the idea of playing as a female. Off the top of my head the only top tier female protagonists I can think of are Laura Croft and the girl from Heavenly Sword. There’s also Samus Aran, but that’s also a bit of a cheat since she’s nearly always armored and the reveal that she was a woman was one of video games’ first huge reveals. But I know this is untrue - at least among the video game aficionados I know. Dan, members of the Giant Bomb Squad, and others who write about games online played Mass Effect as a female Shepard. Ryan or Jeff (or both, I can’t remember) of Giant Bomb plays as a female every time a video game gives him the option.
It is a fact of life that things will be bootlegged. (commonly called pirated, but this is one area where I strongly agree with rms. Piracy is a horrible thing where people get kidnapped on the ocean and die. I have in-law relatives who have died from pirates. So I don’t find it cute to compare that with people who acquire things without paying for them) We usually think of digital items, but go to Chinatown in New York and you’ll see the same thing going on with physical objects. So what’s a company to do? My least favorite route is digital restrictions management (DRM) because it just makes things a real pain in the butt for legitimate users. (It also makes criminals of people who just want to rip their DVDs and BluRays to their laptops or media centers) My favorite tactic (which works best with games, but I’ve seen it with music and movies), is to mess with the person who didn’t pay for it. I’ve seen games that are extremely mean about it (mean being in the eye of the beholder since these people didn’t pay for the game) where they make it so that the final bad guy is unbeatable (after all those hours!). Others glitch out halfway through. Game Dev Tycoon developer Greenheart Games was able to use the subject of their game (in which you’re a game developer - META!) to come up with a unique solution. On the same day the game came out, they started a torrent with a slightly modified version of the game. It works just like the paid version for a while. Then you get this message from your developers:
In addition to the game I played this month, I’ve decided from now on to include a running total of the top games to see if/how they change with time. For example, when I wasn’t paying attention, Saints Row: The Third made the Top 7. (Which, raptr, is a weird number. Usually these things are multiples of five)
[caption id=“attachment_5996” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Elites have some NICE houses in Cities XL[/caption]
I am really, really enjoying building up my city. There are new zoning densities that open up as you get more and more populous. For a while I was using a strategy similar to what’s going on in my in-law’s neighborhood - raze the single family homes to build apartments. Then later raze those to build sky-rises. But then I abandoned that for suburban sprawl since the map was so huge. As most people (I think) do in these city simulation games, I started off with an area similar to what happens in real life. In order to keep taxes low, you don’t want long roads separating your citizens from their jobs. So the first residential area is kinda dingy and exists near some really dirty industrial manufacturing. So I decided to build a nicer part of town, with more parks and cleaner air, across the river. However, they still needed to get to work, so traffic started building up on the bridge. So I had to make another and another and…..
[caption id=“attachment_5941” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Saints Row: The Third - End Credits[/caption]
Saints Row: The Third (3 hrs) - I finished Saint’s Row: The Third in March. Overall, my enjoyment suffered a bit from a lack of play, but it was necessary due to planning for Scarlett’s birthday and starting a new semester of my graduate work. In the final mission you’re given a choice of pursuing Killbane or saving Shaundi. Angel de la Muerte asks you to go after Killbane because of their personal relationship, but I went after Shaundi because I thought that’s what my character would have done - he goes back with Shaundi way further than with Angel. Also, I was reading a walkthrough to help me get through the last mission as quickly as possible and (which influenced me to upgrade to the point where I could summon tanks and helicopters). So I knew I’d face off with Killbane in the Ganstas in Space DLC. The mission was awesome with “I need a hero” playing in the background as I raced to save her. It’s the perfect song for looping without getting annoying. But I felt the ending was way too anti-climactic. There isn’t even any fallout from Angel for having not chosen to pursue Killbane. Then I got to Gangstas in Space. The walkthrough I’d been reading didn’t mention it was essentially the movie the Third Street Saints were in. (I think it was mentioned throughout the game, but I’d forgotten) So while I DID faceoff with Killbane, it wasn’t a true battle.
[caption id=“attachment_5961” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] My Cities XL Region - 1 city with 75 thousand residents[/caption]
I first played Cities XL in May of 2011. I last played a year ago in April 2012. At the time I said I couldn’t wait until Sim City came out. However, we know what a fiasco that has become. So, discouraged about playing Sim City I decided to load up Cities XL. This is the first one - not 2011, 2012, or Deluxe. The graphics are pretty amazing and rival anything in the current Sim City.
[caption id=“attachment_5858” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Saint’s Row: The Third - Playing with Dan - the only way I could beat this mission[/caption]
Saint’s Row: The Third (15 hrs) - I played a lot of fun missions, including Deckers.die, but in order to get there I had to get Dan’s help on this helicopter escort mission. It was fun having him join in. I might need him in March as I finish up the game.
First of all, a quick reminder that my Game of the Year doesn’t necessarily have to come out in 2012. Because I don’t have the time to dedicate to video games, the price premium of buying it new rarely makes sense to me. So my Game of the Year will be my favorite game that I played in 2012.
As I compiled my list I realized that I played a lot less games in 2012. I may not have played a lot less hours (I haven’t bothered comparing the totals with 2011), but I definitely had a lot less variety. A lot of that has to do with the birth of my daughter this year. Only as the year has gone on have I been able to carve out some time here and there to play story-based games. In addition, I resumed pursuing my master’s degree in the fall, right around the time I was able to have a bit more time to myself. I didn’t have any gameplay at all in March, September or October.
[caption id=“attachment_5805” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Saint’s Row The Third: The Ho Boat[/caption]
Saint’s Row the Third (14 hrs): I got a lot of video games for my birthday and Christmas (mostly on Steam). So I wanted to finish up the last narrative game I had started before playing those games. I played a few missions in Saint’s Row The Third. As I had surmised before, the loose narrative based mostly on archetypes and stereotypes made it extremely easy to jump in. It wasn’t like in Mass Effect or Final Fantasy 10 where I couldn’t remember why I should be caring about these characters. The missions with the VTOL planes (STAG missions) were pretty hard.
Civilization V (17 hrs) - I took advantage of the Steam Fall Sale to finally pick up the Gods and Kings expansion to Civ V. I have enjoyed founding my own religion, Otakuism. Religion plays a much more key role than they did in Civ IV. In the previous game, I would pretty much just found a religion because each city would pay me gold (with certain buildings or government choices) and I’d get a window into cities. In Civ V the religion plays like another level of policies. You get to choose a series of attributes for your religion such as temples giving you gold or faster territory expansion. It tends to make the expansion of religion to other cities and civs a much more important task than before. I’m still a little unsure of how cities pressure other cities to adopt religion because I seemed to have one city flipping even though I couldn’t see any reason for it. (Could have been another civ sending prophets my way) Spies are also added. The spy missions remind me of Assassin’s Creed:Brotherhood assassin missions. Unlike previous iterations of Civ, the spies aren’t on the map. You assign them to a city or city-state and then they either steal you tech (which may not be useful if you’re super advanced and/or playing normal or easier), rig elections in city states (gaining you influence), or protect your cities from being screwed over by other spies. I must admit that I haven’t done much investigating in the civclopedia, but I can’t really see how to generate more spies and so the whole system seems like a mini-game diversion. I continued my strategy of non-aggression unless another civ attacks me or denounces me. Then I drop my hammer on them and take over their capital city and, sometimes, eliminate them entirely. I like that the requirements on resources for building some units has been reconfigured. I usually ended up not using a lot of early-game siege weapons because iron tended to be too scarce. I think it’s a lot more balanced on which units need resources like oil, iron, and horses than before the expansion pack.
[caption id=“attachment_5709” align=“aligncenter” width=“400”] Final Fantasy VII on pcsx-r[/caption]
Recently I was putting away my old video game systems into deep storage. The Playstation 2 hadn’t been played in a year and I didn’t want to clutter up my entertainment console with unused systems. So I started exploring the emulation landscape on last generation’s systems. Would I be able to play last generation’s games on my computer if it tickled my fancy? It turns out that, at least for Playstation 1 and 2, they work just as well as on the system for all the games I own. When I first discovered emulators, I used them to play Chrono Trigger in the high school library when I was bored. When I went back to them in college, it was to play arcade games from my childhood on MAME.
[caption id=“attachment_5677” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] The Walking Dead video game[/caption]
The Walking Dead (14 hours) - I played the latest episode of The Walking Dead. Because you can’t just save wherever you want, I ended up with 14 hours of playtime. I still haven’t finished episode 4.
I started a new feature over on Dan’s blog since his blog is so focused on video games. It’s called You Never Forget Your First Time and it’s about reliving the first moments with a game. The first entry is here.
[caption id=“attachment_5592” align=“alignleft” width=“480”] Saints Row: The Third - My Engineer Mask[/caption]
Team Fortress 2 (5 hrs) - a lot of this time was spent testing out my new private server which I described setting up in this post.
Civilization V (1 hr) - played a little bit in the game I’m documenting at onemoreturn.ericsbinaryworld.com . Been too busy to play much more than that.
I first heard about virtual machines about six to seven years ago. I couldn’t see a point in wanting to run another computer inside your computer. A few years ago I used VMs to test and blog about Linux distros. In the past year I’ve used it to preview new features in Fedora while the next version was in beta. This week I used them in the most useful way yet: to test server software before implementing them on my public, paid server. These were some of easiest installs I’ve ever done - even easier than Wordpress’ famous Five Minute Install.
[caption id=“attachment_5589” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] The Walking Dead - “Oh, FL…..too often the butt of jokes”[/caption]
The Walking Dead (7 hrs) - I had no reason to play this game. I like point and click adventure games, but I don’t read The Walking Dead or watch the TV show. I don’t really care much for zombie games although I’m not opposed to them. But the same was on sale during the Steam Summer Sale and Dan bought it for me. This is a really, really good game. While you can probably really appreciate it if you’re a fan of the comic or TV show, I’m enjoying it without the need to know anything about what happens in that fiction. I think is easily accomplished because the game serves as a prequel to the comic (and, by extension, loosely a prequel to the tv show as well). So I don’t need to really know anything or have unnecessary character exposition to set up the world. You’re playing as the zombie apocalypse happens.
Civ V (11 Hrs) - talk of the expansion pack made me want to play some more Civ. I played a scenario and then I played a regular game. I had a blast and I can’t wait to buy the expansion pack.
Peggle Deluxe (5 hrs) - Worked on some of the challenge puzzles
Team Fortress 2 - (3 hrs) - played when the Pyro pack came out. Really enjoyed the new mode.
Got a little bit of time to play games while waiting to do midnight feeds. I’ve already spoken about these games a bunch of times, so it’s going to be a short post.
Civilization V (2 hrs)
Team Fortress 2 (2 hrs)
Cities XL (1 hr) - fun, but I can’t wait for Sim City 5 to come out!
[caption id=“attachment_5482” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Mass Effect 2 Space Graves”] [/caption]
Mass Effect 2 (19 hrs) - I knew my wife was getting close to delivering our first child, so I was rushing as quickly as I could to save the galaxy. I got to it with one week to spare. Phew! I didn’t enjoy the story as much as Mass Effect 1, but the gameplay was orders of magnitude better. For one thing I didn’t have to worry about having too many guns. (A frequent problem in the first entry) I also enjoyed the characters a little more (some of them, anyway). I ended up doing a lot more side missions and I felt they were well designed. If too much time doesn’t pass between when I finished the game and when I get free time to blog, I’ll do a writeup on Mass Effect 2 and how I liked it vs the first one. However, it would mostly be a long-winded version of what I said above and with the baby…. well, don’t hold your breath.
There aren’t any new games on here, so I’m only going to mention some quick comments on each.
Plants vs Zombies (29 hrs) - threw a bunch of hours into this game because I just had a handful of achievements left and for some reason I wanted to finish it off. 2 or 3 to go
Civilization V (9 hrs) - still love this game. I wish I had more time for it
[caption id=“attachment_5231” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“A new level in Bastion”] [/caption]
While I’m not some video game hipster that doesn’t enjoy the Triple-A games, I have found myself increasingly having my most compelling game experiences on games created by indie or small studios. I think this is because indie studios are no different from starups, indie bands, and indie film makers in their willingness and ability to explore risky and new ideas. I felt the same way about Braid when I played it in 2009 as I do about Bastion this year.
Civilization V (75 hrs) - What can I say about this game that I haven’tsaidalready? This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today. If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.
With school over I had plenty of time to get back into video games last month. I had a blast!
Team Fortress 2 (6 hrs) - Got back into this game because my brother-in-law wanted to play it. I’d forgotten how awesomely fun it is to play this game!
Plants vs Zombies (5 hrs) - I wanted a quick game of fun so I went after some achievements in PvZ. I also found this game to be a blast.
For people of my generation (and the younger ones of the previous one) video games are cultural phenomenon no less important to the way our brains work than books, music, or movies. So it’s no surprise that our music, which has been inspired by books and movies in the past is now being inspired by video games. What was surprising to me were all the different manifestations this inspiration has taken.
[caption id=“attachment_4997” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Saren is not a believer”] [/caption]
Sorry I took so long to get to this. My last post had me finding out that the Reapers were actually the most ancient species I’ve heard about until now. And after my face off with Saren on Virmire, I thought I’d have to chase him to Ilos to finish the game. But, nope, I was able to do whatever I wanted. This was kinda weird timeline-wise, but I already discussed the disconnect that makes you realize this is a game last time around.
For those who are new readers, I’m keeping track of the games I’m playing monthly (via Raptr) and then writing a little blurb on the games. This is in prep for my year-end blog post.
Team Fortress 2 (4 hrs) – I continue to really enjoy this game. I think of all of non-story-based games I have, this one has one of the fastest completion times for a single game. Civilization 5 can take me a week or longer to finish. And my other games fall somewhere between these two. (With a few exceptions like Pacman CE DX)
Last time I blogged about Mass Effect, I had just finished up with a planet where a plant was controlling everyone. After that I did my first real tour of my ship to go talk to all the people who had joined my crew. I got to sneak up on Ash talking to her sister and learned she had a crush on me. I decided to nip that in the bud because I found her personality annoying compared to Liara. I also found out about her background. She was religious, but I wonder if Christianity has survived in the Mass Effect world or it’s something similar to that.
Mass Effect (2 hrs) - Dan tells me that if I don’t go for the optional quests, I could be near the end. After the next major story beat I’m probably going to write up my next Mass Effect blog post. I’m really enjoying the fiction.
Team Fortress 2 (60 hrs) - I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy playing this game. I am not an FPS person. But it recently went free to play so I figured “why not?” I started playing the game and it’s every bit as fun and funny as the “Meet the X” videos. It’s a lot of fun to formulate the strategies for the game. I’m still learning a lot about that. And just when you think you know what to do, there are the extra weapons you earn for getting certain achievements. They don’t throw off the balance because they give with one hand and take with the other. The Heavy’s gun Natasha, for example, has a higher chance of critical hits, but it takes longer to spin up.
Just one game this month, it’s been quite a busy month for me!
[caption id=“attachment_4589” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Walking Around in Mass Effect”] [/caption]
Mass Effect (8 hours) - This is a great game that I’d heard about for a long time, but never got around to playing. A recent Steam sale made it cheap enough for me to give it a try and I’m really enjoying it. I’m writing about my playthrough and you can read the first part here and the second part here.
Sometimes I think what I want is Mass Effect: The Laserdisc game. I love the story and I love the Codex entries. Just getting completely engrossed in the Mass Effect world. What I don’t enjoy is the fighting. This isn’t because I’m bad at it. My cover-based shooter noob days are long behind me with Uncharted 1. But the story’s so awesome and sometimes I have to wait hours between story beats while I fight my way through the Geth. That gets old pretty quickly.
Portal 2 (3 hrs) - finished multi-player game with Dan. That game is AWESOME. I was only bummed that the puzzles never truly got hard. There were only 3 (max!) that left Dan and I scratching out heads for a long time. Perhaps they wanted to make sure everyone finished the story events and so they didn’t make it hard. Or maybe they had as hard a thinking with four portals as we did when we were first getting used to it. I can’t wait for the DLC as I hope we get some more challenges. Heck, we didn’t even have any white gel in the multi-player games.
[caption id=“attachment_4589” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Walking Around in Mass Effect”] [/caption]
I recently bought Mass Effect in a Steam sale that knocked the price of Bioware’s RPG to $5. Thanks yet again to the guys at the Giant Bombcast (seriously, this is the second or third I’ve bought because of them and fourth or fifth from podcast recommendations), I’d wanted to play the game, but was waiting for a sale price since I have tons of other games I haven’t even started yet. Having finished Final Fantasy X and the single player mode of Portal 2, I started on Mass Effect.
note: this game came out ten years ago, so I’m going to speak about spoilers freely
I finished Final Fantasy X a few weeks ago. I’d started playing it a long time ago, but the horrible voice acting grated on my nerves and I stopped playing. But, as I was making a list of games I owned but hadn’t completed, I decided to give Final Fantasy X another shot. And I ended up getting sucked into a story that I enjoyed for its uniqueness. Final Fantasy VI and VII are essentially the exact same story. In fact, the reason I have always been mystified about the love for Final Fantasy VII is that Final Fantasy VI did the same thing with a larger cast and more emotion. And Final Fantasy IX was essentially a love letter to Final Fantasy fans full of inside jokes and references. Final Fantasy X is, to borrow a phrase from The Giant Bombcast, a Japanese-ass game.
There was a time when I loved video games. I subscribed to EGM and EGM2. I trolled the nascent World Wide Web looking for video game news. I read IGN religiously. The most powerful systems out there were the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation. Then I discovered girls and dropped the subscriptions. Most of the video games of that time period were still very arcade-y in nature. Or they were platformers like Mario or Tomb Raider that had the flimsiest excuse for a plot. Yo, the princess got kidnapped again. Run through a bunch of levels to get to her. No exposition or reason for anything going on. You just needed to complete these tasks to unlock the final boss fight. Of course, games were starting to have cut scenes between levels to keep the narrative going. And I remember the great FMV flame wars that caused. Were you just working to unlock expository videos? This was better than the Mario case, but there was still just a small correlation between what you were doing to get through the level and what was going on in the story. The biggest exception was the movie tie-in game, but those tended to have gameplay elements that were full of suck.
It’s been a little over a year, so I wanted to make a new, updated list of the podcasts I’m currently listening to. For shows I covered before, I’m just going to copy the description over, verbatim.
Science
The Naked Scientists - This has nothing to do with nudity. It’s a British thing, like The Naked Chef. This great British radio show covers science topics equivalent to what you’d read in Discover Magazine in the USA. It’s informative while being entertaining, and I learn a lot every week. (Approx 1 hour long)
Final Fantasy X (36 hrs) - I started playing this game again to get away from computer games. It was hurting my back to sit at the computer. I could just stand in the guest room, where the PS2 is. I hadn’t played for months or maybe even a year, but I hadn’t gone that far in the game, so I wasn’t too lost. (Unlike when I finished FF7 and didn’t even remember what the point was) I’m still not done, but it’s already knocked Assassin’s Creed II from long-time position as my #6 most played game raptr. It’s already taken me longer than Final Fantasy IX. There’ll be a review once I finish. I’m so close, but the final boss keeps kicking my butt. I may need to do some more grinding.
If I have to sum up Portal 2 in one word: brilliant! I really enjoyed the first Portal a lot. The sense of not knowing what’s going on and GLaDOS’ obvious demented nature made for a dark video game the likes of which I’d never experienced. It was an artform as much as any other movie or book. And the puzzles were great fun and really got my brain going. But I wasn’t hooked. In fact, there was a two year gap between when I started and finished the game.
Civ 5 (70 hrs) - In March I fired up Civilization V for the first time since 16 Nov 2010. What was the catalyst? My wife asking what happened to all the enthusiasm for the game when it first came out. Well, as I’ve mentioned before, right after I got the game I played it for a week straight. Then I went on vacation to the Grand Canyon, to NYC for Halloween, had Thanksgiving and Christmas at my house, and a stronger focus on my webcomic. Her question reminded me of how much I loved the Civilization franchise. So I started playing and was reminded of why I loved it so much. It took me most of the first game to get back into the groove with Civ 5’s new quirks, but I really appreciated the improvements to AI. Civ V is now my most played game with 117 hours. (Finally surpassing Civ 4) Most of that time was added in March as I got sick and spent a few days home. The achievements in Civ 5 really played a key role in keeping me interested over so many hours. I did things I never would have done in order to get those achievements and now I have a much better understanding of how best to use those Civilizations.
Again, just a small blog post to document the video games I played with throughout the year to make it easier to do a recap at the end of the year.
Assassin’s Creed II (30 min) - I booted this sucker up to get some of the easy trophies I’d missed while playing the game like the Red Light District and Ivory and Ebony trophies. Reviewed it here
Assassin’s Creed: Brootherhood (30 min) - I wanted to see what the online gaming portion of this game was like. Discovered one of the things you give up when playing games long after they come out is that it’s harder to play online. It took a long time for the servers to find people to put into our games. The games were fun. It’s very hard to hide and act like an NPC and also kill people so it’s a fun challenge. Not fun enough to get me addicted, though. Previously reviewed here
This game that’s been capturing nearly all my free time in February was an impulse buy. At $10 I might have passed it up, but in a midweek sale it was $5 and I decided it looked interesting enough to pick up. This is a great example of what I spoke about here with respect to getting more people to buy a digital good by putting it on sale even if they don’t have shelf space to clear. Part of what drew me to the game was the decidedly retro-futuristic art style. It gives the game a very unique set of visuals. The 1920-40s music (I’m not 100% sure which decade) also helps add to the atmosphere.
This is just a mini blog post I’m going to try and remember to do monthly to keep track of the games I played to make it easier to tally up for the end of the year “Games of 2011” blog post.
Assassin’s Creed II - 27 hours
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood - 25 hrs
blogged about them here and here.
The Secret of Monkey Island - 4.5 hrs
blogged about it here.
Greed Corp - 8 hrs
An awesome little game I bought on Steam on a whim during a mid-week sale. More to appear about this game in the future.
[caption id=“attachment_4108” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Assassin’s Creed II (photo by SingleBuilder)”] [/caption]
Back at the beginning of January, I compared the first and second installments in the Assassin’s Creed main line of games. A couple weeks ago I finished up Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, a continuation of Desmond and Ezio’s stories. I don’t have too much more to add to what I wrote about the second game before. For the most part, I feel the same about it as before. The ending was pretty awesome. It took what you learned about the pieces of Eden from the first game and turned it to 11. Reading through TVtropes, I learned that I missed out on a bit of backstory in the first game by not getting on the Abstergo computer. The same could easily happen if you don’t do the optional Subject 16 puzzles in Assassin’s Creed II. As someone who LOVE getting into a game’s universe/backstory I’m a bit miffed that these bits are so optional. On the one hand, it’s great for those who don’t give a crap about the backstory and just want to assassinate some dudes. But it’s really easy to miss how epic the game really is. If it weren’t for the backstory, I wouldn’t be as anxious as I am for the next installment to come out. Unfortunately for my pocketbook, the smart money is on Ubisoft annualizing the Assassins’ Creed series. This may mean we don’t get a good, conclusive ending. Of course, they could go in the super-creative route and give a satisfactory ending and then have new games just fill in story in the past or with other assassin groups.
As with my discussion of Recettear, playing The Secret of Monkey Island involved revisiting a gaming genre from my past. Unlike Recettear, TSoMI is not a parodic look back at an old genre, it is an original game from that time period. TSoMI is an adventure game, a genre that is pretty much only kept alive through the LucasArts Telltale Games ( edit: thanks for the fix, Dan) who is re-releasing old games like the Monkey Island series, publishing new takes on old games like Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and publishing completely new games like Back to the Future.
[caption id=“attachment_4063” align=“aligncenter” width=“406” caption=“Yes, patience may be needed….”] [/caption]
It’s funny, growing up, I loved Square’s RPGs, but I really only played two of them - Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 (originally released as 3 in the US). They just left THAT MUCH of an impression. And not just on me, they profoundly affected Dan as well. Alas, Nintendo losing the license to the Square games resulted in my losing out on playing the games as they came out. It was the main motivation for me buying a used Playstation in college and for eventually getting a PS2. I’ve played way more on my PS3 (which I’ve only had for about a year - 2 years max). Why? Because I kinda lost the somewhat infinite free time I had in my youth. On top of that, when I’ve played through 7, 9, and parts of 8 and 10, I start to wonder if maybe these games were more amazing to my middle school self than they would ever be to my adult self.
During Giant Bomb’s Game of the Year deliberations, one of the panelists was talking about how the difference between Pacman and Pacman Championship Edition DX reflects the difference in video game design over the past thirty years. The original Pacman is a stress-enducing game while Pacman CE DX is an empowering experience. Pacman punishes you for the smallest mistake, only gives you four power pellets per maze, and gets more punishing the further you go. By contrast, Pacman CE DX uses a bullet-time effect to give you a chance to turn past ghosts you might otherwise have crashed into, the power pellet regenerate, and the game becomes generally more fun the faster and more frenetic it gets. The ghosts, save one or two, follow you around and aren’t much of a menace unless you come back around to your tail as in the game snake or need to exit through a hole where a sleeping ghost waits. And this wasn’t limited to Pacman, tvtropes has a whole trope dedicated to this called Nintendo hard. Why has this change come about?
Because I rarely play games when they first come out, I had the occasion to play Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II back-to-back. As I’ve mentioned before ( near the end of the post ) getting to experience sequels one after another can yield some benefits over waiting years in between. (Plus, in the case of stuff like Harry Potter (which I haven’t read yet) you don’t have the tension between books) In this case, it was interesting to see how much had changed while keeping the core game the same. There may be some very mild spoilers below, but I’m trying to keep it so that you can read it even if you intend to play the games.
I played a lot of games this year. Perhaps more than in any previous year since leaving high school. Since I usually don’t buy games when they first come out, the winner will not necessarily be a game that came out this year. I went to my raptr page and took a look at all the games I played this year. Following is a list of the games and a little about what I thought of them. At the end will be my pick for 2010.
I was on the phone with my dad a couple weekends ago and he asked if I was playing Civilization 5. He’d heard that Dan was playing it and was surprised that it was still around and Dan and I were still playing it. I told him I was playing it and reminded him that it was he who indirectly got us stuck on the series.
Back in the old days of the early 1990s, no one gave a second thought to sharing computer software with each other. Most people didn’t know about the public Internet or BBSes so, for the most part, there was no onerous digital restriction management (DRM) to keep people from sharing software. Some games had codes that you had to type in which were found in the manual, but manuals could be photocopied - after all, there were no authentication servers to connect to. I’ve spoken about this before, but those early “wild west” days lay the seeds for my software purchases over the last decade. A friend lent me 3.5” disks of Sim City 2000. I played that sucker everywhere. I’d take it wherever there would be computers and install it there to play until my parents said it was time to go. To this day, I’ve bought all the mainline Sim City products and expansion packs. So, who’s to say that today’s illicit software users aren’t building up affinities for software brands they’ll be loyal to when they have the cash.
To finish up talking about the game I left off in my last post, I won my first civ 5 game via conquest - a new one for me. I usually turtle and do a culture victory or science victory. It was only near the end of my time playing Civ IV that I started to become comfortable with domination victories. I ended up with a score of 2679, a score I have yet to best. The way the ending is now structured makes it easy to miss the old charts and graphs they’d always make you click through. So on that first game I missed out on finding out what historical leader I compared with. And, there doesn’t seem to be a way to access that. Other thoughts from this first game include that the construction pace feels a bit slower (like less buildings units built in a game) and Dan concurred once he played his own games. Great people now make their buildings outisde the city. This makes using them to make their special building more of a strategic process than in Civ IV. Great artists make monuments and those could end up obliterating a farm or some other tile modification. A final fun bit of art imitating life: in this game the Americans had taken over middle east.
?At first I ridiculed achievements/trophies. The idea that grown men and women (and, heck anyone over 12 years old) would care about getting these achievements enough to continue playing through their games until they earned them all seemed ludicrous. Then, I acknowledged it was a fun way to compete with friends in games that are otherwise single player experiences. In time I came to understand the idea behind achievements, both for compulsive people and regular folks. From my non-scientific observations, it appears that people who play video games tend to be more likely to be compulsive people. The video game companies figured this out and then realized that if they created trophies for all kinds of situations in a game, that most people would keep playing until they got all of them. Perhaps this would keep them from trading in a game long enough that it would kill the market for used games.
[caption id=“attachment_3621” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civ 5 tells me I need to set some city production”] [/caption]
Interestingly, the game appears not to pop up and tell you to choose city production, you have to notice that in the bottom right, same for science and so on…..At least it doesn’t let you skip a turn before you worry about that. So I actually like it better. It was far too easy to say you’d deal with something later and then forget. And all the messages queue up there for you to read. I used ALWAYS lose track of those in civ 4. Especially since they used to appear when I was busy on something else and disappear before I could act on them. And here’s what it looks like when you decide to what to build.
[caption id=“attachment_3606” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civilization 5 choosing the game to play”] [/caption]
The opening movie is AWESOME. Most of the visuals were from the trailers, but the frame story was great. Best intro thus far. I decided not to play the tutorial first since it appeared to be for those new to the Civ franchise. I chose Wu Zetian of China since I’ve been playing the Chinese almost my entire time with Civ IV. She has the “Art of War” which makes Great Generals spawn more often. Also the Cho-Ku-Nu unit (like Civ 4) and Paper Maker. I did a small continents map. And I made myself Settler, marked “for learning the game” so I figure it’ll be tutorial enough. And a standard game pace. I REALLY like the new menu system. It’s very well done. Sounds like Leonard Nimoy is still the narrator. I love how it describes my ruler and China in history. Pretty awesome. I let the wonderful narration read out before I “begin my journey”. I take a while to look for the screenshots and it comes up with hints. Pretty awesome. The Chinese music is great. Here are some screenshots. Another post later. Right now I want to play and the game gets annoying (freezes cpu) if I alt-tab out of it to get the screenshots.
Starcraft 2 recently came out so, naturally, I just installed Starcraft for the first time. A few years ago, I decided to atone for that summer my brothers and I had played Warcraft III from an illicit copy by buying the Warcraft III Batlle Chest. It was a pretty awesome deal - for $20 I got the main game, the expansion, and strategy guides for both games. The following year I bought the equivalent bundle for Starcraft. I would have played it about six months ago when Dina’s boyfriend, a Starcraft (and Blizzard, in general) fan was over the house. But, a bug in Windows XP kept the game from installing. When I tried it again this weekend, it worked.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“If Bloomberg can ride the train, so can Batman”] [/caption]
Sometimes jokes can be very misleading to outsiders. For a few months after hearing jokes about how gamey it was that Joker’s henchmen lost track of Batman as soon as he went up onto a gargoyle I didn’t have any inclination to play the game. It just seemed like it would be too jarring to have enemies shooting at me and suddenly be unable to follow the fact that I went up onto a gargoyle. The truth turned out to be a good compromise. But it brings to light an uncanny valley of a different sort. As games become more and more realistic, how do you represent super heroes in a way that doesn’t destroy the video game?
There’s a new system of exchange of goods and services that threatens to rock the economic system and it’s not some new form of derivatives. Digital goods and services are growing larger and larger, but economics has not yet caught up. This is scary because more and more of our economy is based upon digital goods. In order to understand why I’m raising a fuss about this, we have to do a quick review of economics 101.
I’ve been listening to podcasts for about two years now. I got into it because I love listening to some NPR programs, but they are always on when I’m at work or asleep on the weekends. Eventually, I heard on NPR that they have podcasts of various shows. I checked it out right away because in Maryland NPR is on 88.1 which is always being interfered with by SiriusXM radio receivers. At first I only listened to a few podcasts because I didn’t own an iPod and I so I burned the podcasts to a CD-R every few days. That got expensive, so I got an iPod shuffle. Since podcasts don’t take up too much space, I started getting into more and more podcasts. Some I discovered in magazines and others were recommendations from Dan. So, I thought I would share the podcasts I listen to so that those following this blog could perhaps discover some new podcasts they didn’t know about. Dan, for example, recently got into This American Life. (I think after I kept telling him about it - but he may have discovered it independently) I’m going to put links to the actual podcast URL, so just copy that into your podcather or iTunes.
[caption id=“attachment_3224” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civilization IV: Colonizaton: My First Colony”] [/caption]
Do not be fooled by the Civ IV part of the title to the updated to the classic Colonization. You do so at your own peril; well, your colony’s peril. Colonization is primarily a game of economics while Civilization is primarily a game of domination. In Civ you work the tiles around your city and either get “money”, production, or food. In Colonization you work the tiles around your city and get cotton, tobacco, ore, sugar cane, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. And, while in Civ you simply use the production to build units and city structures, in Col you take all these raw products and produce finished products: cloth, cigars, tools, guns, rum, and coats.
This is a game I have been waiting for ever since I played New Super Mario Brothers on my borrowed Nintendo DS. This is the purity of Mario. Screw all this 3D stuff. Yeah, it rocks to have a 3D space to run around in, but that’s not Mario. Mario is a side scroller and its charm comes out best that way. Or maybe I’m just an old codger nostalgic for what I grew up with. It’s probably the latter given that the Mario theme in New Super Mario Brothers Wii (NSMBW henceforth), a modified version of the original with a little “ah” a capella thrown in, excites me in ways I cannot express. Apparently it also excites the goombas and turtles because they do a little dance move during the a capella parts.
Tetris is the first video game I was unable to shut off on command. Players of Sid Meier’s Civilization are familiar with the problem of “one more turn”, similar to the bookworm’s “one more page”. Tetris was my first “one more turn” game. I first played Tetris when I was five or six and received my Gameboy for my birthday or Christmas.
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“237” caption=“Tetris on Gameboy, the definitive version in my eyes”] [/caption]
Don’t worry, this blog isn’t about to become some weird fan tribute blog to Braid. It’s more of a case of trying to make sense of the game I’ve just played. There’s really no reason to make sense of The Beatles Rockband. You are one of The Beatles playing music. There’s nothing to “get”. But finishing Braid has left me with more questions than answers. Braid has the potential to leave you frustrated in the same way you may end up frustrated at a particularly dense painting where you see that there is a table of objects, but can’t figure out the significance of the objects. It just looks like a cluttered table until the docent explains that the book with a skull on it represents that man will never understand his world until he dies.
warning: The following contains many spoilers about Braid. I, personally, feel that your enjoyment of the game will be greatly reduced by reading this ahead of time. You have been warned!
I finished Braid last night. I did cheat a little. Of the 60 possible puzzle pieces, I used a walkthrough to get about 10 of them. Each of the ones that I used the walkthrough for (and I did not do this until I had spent a good chunk of time trying everything I had learned up to that point and even afterwards (since you could revisit worlds) were puzzles I would have NEVER solved. For example, the puzzle piece that is accessed by moving around the giant replica of the puzzle in the level would never, ever have occurred to me. Someone of a certain type of mind would surely have realized that the puzzles would not exist in the world if they did not have a purpose, but I could not figure this one out. And the fact that most of the puzzles are one-offs means that you never do this again.
That a game like Braid can exist is a statement on where video games are as an art form with a well-established history and canon. To make a parallel in the paint world: without a long canon of traditional paintings of tables with fruit and bread, people wouldn’t have really understood the “parody” or “remix” of a Cubist rendition of such a painting. In the same way, Braid is most enjoyable to those of us who have been playing video games for the past 20 years, growing up with Super Mario Bros. as our first video game experience. In fact, Braid does indeed make a few callbacks to this classic game which has almost become a scripture to us. Any game that allows users to design levels (eg Little Big Planet) cannot exist for more than a femptosecond before at least four people have recreated Super Mario Bros. World 1-1. Braid does nothing so brash and that’s where the game design genius begins to show. The game designer does not ape Mario, but hints at it here and there. One can almost see the developer giving you a knowing look and a nudge in the ribs. “Look here, I’ve made this or that subtle reference.” I don’t want to ruin it by speaking of it even though this game has been out for ~ a year already. It would ruin the delight of experiencing it.
I finally finished Final Fantasy IX. Took me a little over 30 hours. I didn’t do all the side quests, but that’s more of Dan’s thing. The characters I played with the most ended up at about level 52 - if that tells you anything. Except for a little bit when I was trying to learn some skills, I didn’t do any grinding. That’s the big difference from when I played Final Fantasy VI as a kid. I don’t have quite as much time. Whenever I got to a complicated dungeon, I consulted an FAQ. So what are my final thoughts? Here’s a rambling, stream-of-conciousness review of the game after finishing it up.
After playing Final Fantasy 9 for a few days, here are my first impressions.
the graphics are a little distracting - it’s kinda like an uncanny valley thing. It’s not quite as nice as the new stuff, but better than the SNES graphics. But there are a lot of closeups because it was state of the art when it first came out.
There appears to be a lot of slapstick with Steiner. But then again, there’s always some slapstick in Final Fantasy games.
Like pretty much any Final Fantasy game, after the first disc, I’m still not sure what the plot is. Just like anime/manga, the plot is usually not evident in the first few hours. After playing for just about eight hours I still didn’t know what was going on.
At first I thought I had acquired an airship VERY early for a Final Fantasy game, but then quickly lost it.
I have a lot of love for Squaresoft (well, now they’re SquareEnix), despite the fact that I’ve played relatively few of their games. I think Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 (originally released as Final Fantasy 3 in the US) are the pinnacle of their jRPG work. I’ve also played Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Chrono Cross. I didn’t really enjoy Final Fantasy 7 nearly as much as everyone else. I think it’s partly out of spite. All these new jRPG fans think that Final Fantasy 7 is the greatest Final Fantasy game ever. But they’re never played the SNES Final Fantasies. Nothing is better than Final Fantasy 6 story-wise. And Chrono Trigger is unmatched for the amount of differences your actions could make to the game. When I finally got a Playstation in college, I was lucky enough that all the Final Fantasies released up to that time had become “greatest hits” and were available for $20. I bought them all. I finally got to play Final Fantasy 7. I had tried before on our computer, but it just wasn’t up to snuff. Even owning it on Playstation, it took me two attempts to get through it thanks to real life getting in the way. When I finally finished it, I just didn’t see why everyone thought it was so awesome. It might partially have to do with the fact that I had a 2 month gap in the middle of my playing the game, but I just didn’t get what made it so amazing.
A few days ago, I saw the heavy boots story on digg and shared it with Dan. To quickly sum up, in case the web page dissapears into the great bit bucket in the sky, a physics major was told by his philosophy TA that the astronauts on the moon didn’t float away because they had heavy boots on. That prompted Dan to share this post with me again. After leaving a Dr Horrible reference, I started thinking about this. And I came to see Final Fantasy as one of the largest exercises in suspension of disbelief. The most egregious aspect is with the weapons. Because of what is often a very tedious menu screen, I usually do not sell back all of the old, useless weapons back to the shop when I buy new ones. So, technically, my characters are running around a HUGE world map trying to save the world, while at the same time lugging around hundreds of pounds of useless weapons. Quite ridiculous, no? On top of this they may have as many as 99 tents, 99 sleeping bags, and pretty much 99 of any item. Think back to the smallest you could ever fold a sleeping bag. Now, imagine going hiking through the woods with 99 of them split up over, at most, four of you. So, it’s 25 each for three of you and 24 for some lucky bastard - probably the girl in the short skirt with the large breasts who’s always complaining of back problems. This is where gameplay mechanics start to mess with your mind too much if you dn’t suspend your disbelief. Because sleeping bags are not prophelactics, you can use them over and over. But the game makes you discard one each time you use it. Of course, within the game thsi makes sense because you’d otherwise be able to heal up to full every time you were in the map screen. I never questioned it as a kid. I was just glad to have a tent or sleeping bag to heal my characters. But when you think about it, it doesn’t make very much sense. This, of course, naturally leads to the other problem with SquareEnix jRPGs - passage of time. For obvious reasons (mostly related to grinding), time doesn’t pass in these games unless you’re at a milestone moment. So while there’s a meteorite coming towards earth or some jerk has decided to use earth magic or magical-people magic to destroy the world tomorrow, you can sleep in an inn over and over. And while the game never explicitly states you stayed in the inn overnight (except when it’s part of advancing the story - clever, clever they were in those old SNES RPGs) it does often imply it, with transition effects that seem to suggest you were there overnight.
As 2008 has proven - draconian digital restrictions management (DRM) does not stop people from illicitly using computer games. Spore, whose DRM was so bad they got ratings bombed on Amazon.com, was the most pirated game of 2008. The DRM caused hassles for legitimate users and did nothing to stop illicit use. This is always the case. Ever since the beginning of DRM on video games there have been people getting around it. These DRM schemes are not cheap. They are licensed from companies who tell the video game companies that this is the only way to protect their games.
First I updated Wine to 1.0.0 (It didn’t work properly on 0.94) on Ubuntu. In there I have D as the CDROM drive. So I typed wine d:\install.exe This installed just fine
Here’s what happened with 0.94 when I first started this post:
But the first time I clicked to play it, it did not work. The screen just went blank.
When I restarted X, edited the registry keys as it says to do on the Wine site and started it up, this time it started up
When I tried to play the first campaign it froze up Gnome so I restarted X again
Wine FAQ says the movies folder should be renamed for stability reasons
Got Spore on Saturday and I’ve been playing it more or less non-stop since then. It was very, very fun! A lot more fun than I expected from the reviews. I don’t blame the reviewers since the game had been hyped for the past three years. I think the cell stage sucks and I don’t know if I’ll ever play it again. It’s very boring and there isn’t much to do other than eat red or green dots. The tribal stage was also boring and needs some tweaking - perhaps a la expansion pack. All the other stages have been a lot of fun - especially the creature stage.
I played some Beyond the Sword this weekend. First game was my first civ game in what has to be at least half a year. I’ve just been busy with other hobbies/games. This was the first time I was actually able to have a Corporation. I built the Sushi and Cereal corporations. Pretty interesting concept. And I founded one or two cities in my neighbor civ and they opened branches all over their land. (More money for me!)
I heard this on The Linux Outlaws Episode 42 and I thought it was a pretty awesome idea. Up until now Valve has been pretty hostile towards people asking them to release onto Linux, even threatening to ban anyone who brought it up in the forums. Apparently someone has convinced them of the merits because here’s the story that led Linux Outlaws to report the headline.
My brother, who is really into video games, has informed me that pretty much every computer game developer plans to release via Steam in the near future. This means that most people, who are always mentioning their only reason for keeping Windows around is to play games, can finally get rid of Windows for good!
This song is awesome and, best of all, it’s been released under a Creative Commons license, so I can share it with you all without fear of the RIAA breathing down my neck!
I first heard Code Monkey on a recent episode of Linux Outlaws. It’s a song about a code monkey who is having a hard time with his boss and with unrequited office love. It’s a tale any code monkeys will find familiar. You can either download it at this post or, if that takes too long, off of Jonathan Coulton’s blog. His l ast.fm page says he came out with a new song a year for a whole year, so check that out. There may be some other really awesome ones.
Ever since I first started playing computer games in elementary school there have been three categories of games that I’ve loved: puzzle games (eg Lemmings, Tetris, Puzzle Bobble), simulation games (eg Sim City), and real-time strategy games and the related turn-based strategy games (eg Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Civilization). I play other types of games periodically, but these are the ones I always return to.
There are essentially 3 main RTS games and all other games usually license their game engines. These are Command and Conquer (C&C), Warcraft (WC), and Age of Empires (AoE). I cut my teeth, so to speak, on C&C with a disc a friend lent me so we could play against each other over the net. I then played a shareware version of WC and a demo version of AoE.
I’m writing this Sunday, but I am trying to limit my blog posts to one a day so that there can be something for my readers each and every day.
I couldn’t wait for Mario Kart Wii to come out. The Mario Kart series has been my favorite on the Nintendo and Mario Kart Double Dash is the reason why my wife bought a Gamecube. We’ve had countless hours of fun playing and when the release got post postponed until today we were pretty bummed. So today we were at Best Buy right when it opened to make sure we’d be able to get a copy. There were enough, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they sold out by the end of the day.
I received Super Mario Galaxy for Christmas and I must say that I’m quite happy with the gift. This is the most talked about Wii game for the end of 2007 and not without reason. Everyone who’s into gaming kept mentioning that Mario Galaxy is the true successor to Super Mario 64 on the Gamecube. Pretty much everyone, myself included, thinks that Mario Sunshine was a piece of sod that should never have been made. Mario Galaxy, on the other hand, has a lot of the same charm that made SM64 so much fun to play. My only complaint, and this is a very tiny one, is that the puzzles are a bit easier than Mario 64. I remember racking my brain with my brother trying to figure out how to get the each of the stars for SM64. With Mario Galaxy, I feel that most of the stars are a lot easier to get. However, as I write this blog post I realize that I played Super Mario 64 approximately 10 years ago, so it’s possible that the puzzles that were so hard for me back then would not be quite as hard now. That said, I beat the game in two days with about 20 hours of gameplay. That is, I beat the final Bowser, but was only about half way through collecting all of the stars.
The word irreverent is tossed around way too flippantly these days, however, if there’s one site that deserves it, it’s ZeroPunctuation. ZeroPunctuation is a site where a British guy living in Australia reviews video games within a video format weekly. He often makes fun of games and the genres they belong in. The animation is extremely simple, yet remarkably effective. It’s slightly more than xkcd, but not much more than stick figures. The way he does this is brilliant and it must be seen in order to explain it correctly. Just one warning, if you get queasy over profanity, do NOT visit his site.
My brother introduced me to “Guitar Hero” over the summer. I couldn’t really get into it at the time. There were basically two reasons for this. First of all, I just wasn’t in the mood for that type of game on the day he brought it over. However, the concept stayed with me and whenever I hear rock songs, I imagine how easy or hard they would be to play in “Guitar Hero”. The other reason I didn’t get into the game when Dan brought it over is that I didn’t know any of the songs, but one or two. It’s really hard to get into playing the guitar for a song you’re not really into.
Actually, it’s Warcraft cosplay. Why not? They do it with anime. I’m not sure how long the video will remain up, but enjoy it while it’s there. But, can someone who knows the game tell me wtf is the checkered cube?
Will be out either tomorrow or wednesday. Gamestop says tomorrow and Best Buy’s website says Wednesday. I played one last Warlords Game and did pretty well. I think this was my third best score in the expansion pack. So you can download it and play this last turn and add it to your high score if you want something to beat or something to laugh at. Eric XI of the Chinese would be happy!
Ok, ok….it’s not really by Square-Enix, but it IS an RPG of Columbine. It’s actually not as bad as your gut reaction might say. According to this review in wired, it’s actually a pretty thoughtful game meant to make you think about their motivations and frame of mind. Check out the link above there.
According to “Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life” (p17) Steve Jobs created Breakout! That’s right, that wonderfully addictive game, second only to Tetris for most, was created by the man who created Apple, NextStep, Pixar (via financing), and the iPod. Is there anything the black turtle-neck clad man hasn’t had his finger in?
Someone at MIT has used a Nintendo emulator to deconstruct Mario as you play it. You can see just what was going on in the Nintendo’s RAM as you played the game. It is a very neat hack and definitely worth checking out!
So, on Retrozone, you can buy adapters to plug in your old Nintendo controllers to your Wii. This is for use with the service Nintendo provides to allow you to play on your Wii nearly every Nintendo game that ever came out for any system. I’m extremely surprised that Nintendo didn’t see this coming! They are going to lose out on potential business! They should have released Wii versions of the old control. Sure, they had a “normal” control in addition to the Wii stick, that looks like a cross between a Gamecube and a Super Nintendo controller, but it’s not the same as playing your old games with the old controllers! I predict that the prices of old Nintendo controllers being sold on Ebay will rise.
I don’t have one, but I can pretend I do by reading this review. Makes me glad I didn’t get one. Sounds like they have a lot of issues to work through.
Just finished my first Warlords game and I won a domination victory with my highest score ever! 12108!! Got ranked as Charlemagne! Save file to uploaded in the future.
There is a new, war oriented opening movie that kicks butt! The opening screen no longer plays the happy Lion King-like theme, but a more ominous one. Instead of a nice happy world in the background to the main menu, we have an impatient looking warrior who likes to twirl his sword. Impressive!
Before I get to playing civ4: Warlods, I wanted to share my best high score ever in civ4. It was as the Eric-Chin IV of the Chinese. My final score was 7217 (the next one is 5699! as the japanese) and I finished in 1988 AD with a Domination victory in Chieftain difficulty. I might have finished earlier and had a higher score if I had realized I wouldn’t have my domination victory with the civs I was fighting. If only it had been a Warlords game, I’m pretty sure I could have had some vassal states which would have allowed me to have finished earlier! I can’t wait to buy, install, and play Warlords. To add this game to your hall of fame, just right-click the link below and click save as. Play my last round and it will record my score.
I played a civ4 scenario for the first time last night. I played the American Revolution as the British. The map was really neat to play on, as they duplicated the eastern US pretty well. Each side starts out with about half of the cities on the map. Various actions cause loyalists to join the British or Colonials to take up arms. Also, accurately enough, the British are reinforced by German Mercenaries. From time to time British reinforcements arrive in Canada.
Wired Magazine’s April 2006 issue explored this premise in a very unique way. Instead of saying that we still don’t have conclusive evidence that video games do any damage (and in fact there is some that they are helpful in some instances) they mentioned that the battle between older adults and younger adults/kids is age-old. Below are the quotes they used in their article.
Novels
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?” - Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Momoirs of the Bloomsegrove Family, 1790
The computer kept declaring war on me and finally I got sick of being on the defensive. To speed things up, I declared war on EVERYONE! It still took a few turns! This time I’m playing as my original civ, the Japanese. Let’s see if I can lead the Japanese to victory at Warlord setting.
I’ll post my file from my last game soon. Just started a new civ4 game with 2 new elements. First of all, I’m playing pangea so boats are irrelevant. Second, I’m playing Germans which have some differences from previous civs I’ve played (Japanese and Chinese). One primary difference is that the German special unit comes much later in the game. The Chinese get theirs very early, allowing me to kill the Japanese very early on before wars take too long. Japanese get their Samuarai mid-game which can be good as you’re trying to expand that last bit of land. But I chose Frederick because of his creative side which gives extra culture (I’m a big culture person and always win a bunch of cities from the opposition on culture) and philosophical which helps in Wonders. Execellent! I’m still Cheiftan, but I think next game I will go to War Lord. I still won my last game by a large margin.
At first, Civ4 seemed not to play much better on this computer with twice the stats of my old machine. Yeah, the game didn’t take 15 minutes to load, but it wasn’t as close to instantaneous as I’d hoped. But then I slowly began to see the places where Civ4 was much better on this computer. The first thing I noticed is that the Wonder videos are no longer out of sync with the sound, so I was able to watch them and enjoy what the programmers had put together. Then I noticed that the scrolling was much, much smoother than it previously had been. Finally, I was able to talk to other civs without that causing me to have to wait 3 minutes for the other civ to load up. I finished yet another game, this time as the chinese, and I’ll be uploading that soon.
As I was driving home last week, I heard something interesting on NPR. I knew that people had been selling their MMORG characters on Ebay. They would spend a few sleepless nights getting their character up to a really high level and then sell the character on Ebay to the highest bidder. I’ve heard stories of people making thousands of dollars! But this story on NPR took the cake! People were buying in-game money with their own real money. Of course, as the point was made in the story, our money is no more eral than the money in the game, if people have faith in its redemption value. Apparently there are websites which peg the US dollar to the Everquest Gold Piece! But that’s not all!
Started playing Final Fantasy 8 once I finished up 7. I’ve played for about 3 hours and have already found the obligatory Wedge, Biggs, and Cid. In case you’ve never played the Final Fantasy Series, ever since 4 (I think - but definitely 6) there have always been some characters named Biggs, Wedge, and Cid. Cid is usually a mechanic or inventor or something scientific. In 8 he’s the headmaster of a training school for mercenaries. Biggs and Wedge (after who my brother names a lot of his online personas) are like the people who wear the red shirts in Star Trek, they show up for a little while and then are killed. They usually provide some comic relief, although it’s not a requirement.
I was surprised that, by only raising the level of difficulty by one, the computer opponents in civ4 began to fight each other. In this instance, it was to my advantage because Washington of the Americans attacked Peter of the Russians, who I was planning to attack anyway. I think I will play my fourth game also at this difficulty level or I fear they may annihilate me. I’m not quite ready for that yet.
I finally beat Final Fantasy 7, it’s what has been occupying all of my time this weekend. I never had a Playstation until College, but I really loved Final Fantasy 6, so as soon as I could, I bought a Playstation. Later my brother-in-law got me a PS2 so that I could play FFX and X-2. I wanted to play the games in order, so I started 7, but then came my wedding, the move, and a bunch of other things. So it dragged out for months. Frankly, I don’t recommend doing that for Final Fantasy or any story-based game. What I usually love about Square RPGs is the bond you feel with the characters. But with so much time between playing, I barely could remember what was going on, much less bond with them. However, as there was still a lot to do in the part I’ve been playing for the past week, I was able to get back into the game.
Apparently, MS’s new $400 console is having a lot of problems. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be happy if I plunked down enough money to buy a cheap computer and my video game console didn’t work correctly. However, the real problem for Microsoft is touched upon in this blog.
In the past, such a faux pas would have taken weeks to get attention. One person would have a broken box and think maybe it was just them. After a few weeks of reports, someone at a store like EB would leak the problem to the press and THEN it would be a big deal. That’s how things used to work. Unfortunately for MS, that’s not how they work anymore.
My second civ4 game is over and I did MUCH better this time! I won a Space Race instead of just having the highest score upon end of turns like last game. This earned me a score of # - Neville Chamberlain!
I’ve got a little more than 100 turns left in my second game ofciv4. As my first game served to teach me many new concepts in the civ series, I have fared much better. One of the key concepts I’ve learned is that barbarians are everywhere, even in Settler mode. Previously, in the easiest difficulty level the barbarians did not attack too much. In fact, I remember being shocked about how often they came when I went up one difficulty level in civ3. So, until barbarians stop appearing on the world map, it is extremely dangerous to send settlers to build new cities without first protecting the cities. Take the extra few turns to send at least a warrior (preferably a bowman of some sort) to protect the newly founded city. Also, if you are building near the edges of your boundaries, be sure to send the unit along with the settler to ensure its safety as it makes its way to the new city site.
Here’s a save file from my first civ game. All you need to do is load up the game and hit “enter” to complete my turn. This will give you something to compete against in your Hall of Fame - unless you’re way better than me. My brothers and I started doing this with Civ3 sine we each had our own computers so the score from the others wouldn’t show up in our Hall of Fame. It’s fun to compete against yourself, but not as much fun as competing against others.
If you think that my review of Civ4 was a bit too rosy, check out this review by Tara, who has a review close the middle, but a little more towards the negative side. A verteran civ gamer, like myself, she found herself basically feeling something was different without quite being able to put her finger on it.
One thing we both noticed was that the huge map is much smaller than a huge map in civ3. I felt as though the map wasn’t as large, but I wasn’t sure if it just felt that way. Good to see someone else agree. Check out the review - it’s well written and have even more screen shots!
Here are some more screenshots from my first Civ4 game.
Above you see some of my cavalry units preparing for war. This unit has a lot of cavalry on the map representing the upgrades in defense I have given it.
In the above shot you can see both the industrial era worker as well as the rifleman.
Here I am in the midst of a war with cavalry against spearmen. You can see the gunblast from the cavalry units.
Another area where civ4 has become more balanced for me is in the role the sea and air units play. Although I was always primarily a winner by culture in civ3 and space race in civl/2, whenever I *was* faced with aggression, it was usually my armies that did the heavy lifting. I almost never had a navy save for the purpose of transporting units around. Since my rivals didn’t have navies, I could let my tranports roam the seas unattended.
A score of 3447 in Settler mode is enough for me to no longer have the leadership skills of Dan Quayle, but of Ethelred the Unready. “The Unready” - doesn’t sound like much of a promotion, eh?
In Civilization 4, one of the most significant changes outside of the civics and religions, is the expanded role given to workers. Previously, it was very easy to know what to do with your workers. If a mountain or hill was involved, put a road and mine; otherwise irrigate and road. Jungles and forrests had no purpose except to make your cities sick or deprive you of an irrigation spot. However, if you eliminated them, you would miss out on certain key game resources which only appeared in jungles and forests. So you had to just deal with the sickness and hope that a resource would appear nearby to validate your city’s sufferings.
Welcome to my first look/impressions of Civ4. As you can see, I began the game with a settle and a warrior. The first things you will notice are that they have changed the icons so that a unit is represented by three units instead of one. Although, considering how many units are used in a war, defend a city, etc, it’s obvious that a unit still represents many more units than three. However, it’s pretty neat to watch battles now. Also, there are cows and horses on the map! You can make pastures for these and they will provide you with health/food/etc. If you irrigate or anything else, you lose the animals.
Wondering if anyone else has experienced the following with civ4 special edition. According to the manual and discs, it says that disc 2 should be the disc to play from. However, on my computer it only loads off of disc 1.
Second, I read the terms of usage (the license) when I was a little bored today on time off from work. Did you know that to use a drive emulator like Alcohol 120% or others is against the license? I didn’t know that!
Civ4 was amazing to play yesterday and I took a bunch of screenshots. However, right before I was about to save and quit the game for the day, my video card died and shut down my entire computer. This was the same thing that happened when my cpu/motherboard died freshman year of college so I was very worried at first. However, I unplugged and replugged the computer and it came on, but there was no picture. I swapped in the video card from my wife’s dell and it worked. So it seems the problem was the video card. I’m really ticked because I just bought that PNY nVidia card around one year ago. I checked my power supply and it’s 330 W and the video card asks for 220 W if I have a lot plugged in. So I am pretty sure it was a faulty card. Things usually don’t fail so quickly for me, so I don’t have the warranty. (I know, that’s MY fault) I’ll be buying a new BFG nVidia card - it’s all I can afford for now and is equivalent to the one that just died in terms of power - and as soon as I get my computer back up, I’ll post the screenshots and descriptions.
Here’s what I picked:
-continents
–temperate climate
-medium sea level
-huge world
I picked the japanese because I’ve played them since Civ2.
Tokugawa is the emperor. He is aggressive and orgnized. We start with fishing and the wheel! Excellent since you can’t build roads without wheel.
I picked settler difficulty since they’ve changed a lot since Civ3; I was amazed reading the manual how much had changed.
Here are some things I noticed while reading the civ4 manual at work:
1. there are now worker boats to improve the ocean squares!
2. settlers move 2 squares now
3. you can now move on the same square as an enemy and not attack them!!!
4. mounted unites can’t fortify
5. you can fortify til healed
6. other civs can’t go in your territory until they have open borders treaty with you
7. you can have mult religions present in a civ
8. cottages give you commerce on a square now - not roads
9. frams are like irrigation
10. also camps, pastures, plantations, watermills, quarries, etc
11. You can have a jewish temple, christian temple, etc
I came home for lunch and am now the proud owner of Civ4 Special Edition! The special edition is awesome! The cover is amazing and the …. wow! I’m installing it now. Look for in depth coverage when I play after I get back from work!
It’s been confirmed by BigRedJeffdom and others - Civ4 has been pushed by one day at the retail stores. It makes us civ fanatics angry, but it’s life. At least it’s one day - not a week or even a month.
Reading on the Civilization IV developer’s blogs, I gleaned the following great tidbits!
On Great People:
“Great People are created at the city level, as each city can generate “great people points” based on conditions and structures in the city. You can affect the amount of people points generated in several ways. One very dramatic way is through the creation of a great wonder. For instance, building the Pyramids will make it more likely the city will generate a Great Engineer, while building Stonehenge will make the city more likely to generate a Great Prophet. You can also generate more great people points by taking city population away from working the land and turning them into specialists. Certain Civics choices can work to make your specialists more productive and that can also have a positive effect on your great people point production.
Just reserved my copy of Civilization IV Special Edition at EB. You can bet I’ll be all over that sucker tomorrow after work. Hope to have a more substantial blog post later. q;o)
Oh yeah, people are coming back to my blog! About four hundred unique visitors have come in the last couple of weeks.
“Save often and Save Well” that was the motto of one of the best pioneering games of the 80s and 90s, King’s Quest. They spouted that advice because it was easy to make the wrong move and have your character die. If you hadn’t saved, you could lose hours and hours of game play. As anyone knows, it’s just too frustrating in those circumstances to play the game over. The same shoud go when writing a blog post. I had about two paragraphs I had been writing about how I kept forgetting what I had wanted to write so badly while I wasn’t home. One click too many in Firefox killed that sucker. Just like the video games, I don’t feel like writing it again. I’ve always felt that way about writing - unless it’s ridiculously important to me, I just will let it go. On to some of the other things I wanted to write about.
Video game fans may recall the dissapointment when, last year, uS courts forced Bnetd servers to shut down. Bnetd, short for Battle Net daemon, was created by some hackers who had become very upset with Blizzard’s Battle.net. There was rampant cheating and latancy problems. They did what any hacker would do when confronted with a software problem - develop new software that fixes is. They created their own servers to play Warcraft (and Diablo, etc) on and life was good. that is, things were good until Blizzard too,k them to court and won an injunction against them. The judge had cited that law which I hate so much, the DMCA, as one of the reasons why this software was illegal. Also, he said, Blizzard’s license (which you have to agree to or else can’t play the game) says that you can’t do this. Aha! I knew I should have been reading that crap instead of just clicking next to install my favorite software.
You may or may not know this, depending upon how technologically inclined you are, but you can buy ROMs of the old classic arcade games like Ms Pacman, Arkanoid, Spaced Invader, and much more. (You can also download them off of limewire or kazaa, but that’s illegal if you don’t own the arcade machines) Then there is a group which has developed a program known as the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) which you can use to play these old games. “So?” you may be thinking, “I can find shareware versions of all of those games.” Yes, but this is the actual original version of the game pulled right off the arcade machine without any changes to it whatsoever! What could you do with this? You could do what thousands (or at least hundreds) have already done: build your own arcade machine! There are a few webpages and books on the subject, I know there is one really good book on the subject available at Borders, I can’t remember the title, but it’s fairly obvious. Something like, “Build Your Own Arcade Machine.”
You may have noticed that almost everything in life is organized into catch-22 situations. The video game situation in Linux also follows this law. We’ve got the following dilema: we can’t play regular, consumer PC video games on a Linux box, but if they were made available we would lose a bunch of freeware game developers. Like others, I often wish developers like Maxis would make a Sims 2 port for Linux, allowing me to play the game without having to go through programs like Cedega by Transgaming, which charge a monthly fee for usage. It would make life a heckova lot easier for those of us who wish to legally purchase video games and be able to play then without being locked to the Windows desktop.
I wrote a long time ago in It’s A Binary World 1.0 about all of the symbolism in Chrono Trigger. That game was extremely deep for a video game, but Square (now Square-Enix) has been known to have some very intellectual aspects to their games. Before, I spoke of Massamune, the gurus of time, and how certain aspects of the game spoke to racism. This time I uncovered another metaphor in the video game by watching a movie.
Tilevania in the Unity UI
Glitch Garden during development
Laser Defender - a Galaga Galaxian clone
Arkanoid
GOG Galaxy - Settings
Civ 5 - Lefties 1896[/caption]
Civ 5 - Lefties 1898[/caption]
Poker Night 2[/caption]
Civilization V - against Dave - Fighting Barbarians at the Gates - 2620 BC[/caption]
Skullgirls[/caption]
Back to the Future: The Video Game - The Pseudonym Fun of the series continues[/caption]
Civ 5 - Against Dave - Choosing Meritocracy[/caption]
Civ 5 - Against Dave - Trade Route[/caption]
Civilization V - against Dave - Meeting the Egyptians[/caption]
Civilization 5 - against Dave - people from ancient ruins join the Chinese Empire - 3220 BC[/caption]
Civilization V game against Dave - 4000 BC[/caption]
Civilization 5 against Dave - 3460 BC - Ancient Ruins[/caption]
Civilization V against Dave - 3700 BC[/caption]
Civilization V game against Dave - 3760[/caption]
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations[/caption]
Costume Quest - DLC[/caption]
Quantum Conundrum Science Ball[/caption]
Chell from Portal[/caption]
Cities XL - Trio - buildings up close[/caption]
Elites have some NICE houses in Cities XL[/caption]
Saints Row: The Third - End Credits[/caption]
My Cities XL Region - 1 city with 75 thousand residents[/caption]
Saint’s Row: The Third - Playing with Dan - the only way I could beat this mission[/caption]
Saint’s Row The Third: The Ho Boat[/caption]
Civ 5 - Gods and Kings - Otakuism[/caption]
Final Fantasy VII on pcsx-r[/caption]
The Walking Dead video game[/caption]
Saints Row: The Third - My Engineer Mask[/caption]
The Walking Dead - “Oh, FL…..too often the butt of jokes”[/caption]
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