Category: Video Games

  • How bad are video games really?

    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.…

  • Eric-Chin III of the Chinese’s Reign Ends

    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.

  • On to Warlord!

    Finished my German game in civ4 and now onto warlord. I’ve never been this high up in civ before. Hopefully they don’t crush me!

  • New Civ4 Game Started

    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…

  • Playing Civ4 on the New Computer

    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…

  • Reasons you shouldn’t use Linux

    My wife asked me a poignant question a couple of weeks ago, “If Linux is SOOO awesome, why don’t you stop using Windows?” I told her that I couldn’t play civ4. “I thought you said it was ready for use and equal to Windows,” she continued. And I realized, there are probably some others who…

  • MMORG and Real Economies Clash

    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…

  • FF VIII

    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.…

  • Civ4 Computers Fighting

    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…

  • Final Fantasy 7 End Remarks

    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…

  • civ4 patch released!

    I’m a couple of days late, but – the patch is out! Click on advanced -> check for updates. Civfantics.com has the details of the patch.

  • Waves

    Life seems to be a series of waves that I ride until they crash on shore. Then I wait for the next one and have another go at it. I’m not talking about life fundamentals – those are on a much slower evolution and change much less often, but I’m talking instead about the fun…

  • Xbox 360 in trouble

    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,…

  • My second civ4 game is over

    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! Here is my save file if you wish to add it to your…

  • Ending my second civ4 game

    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…