?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.

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.

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.

By order of the Governor of Maryland, have a happy Sid Meier’s Civilization V Day!

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.

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.

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.