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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[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.
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_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.
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)
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_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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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]
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 game against Dave - 3760[/caption]
Cities XL - Trio - buildings up close[/caption]
Saint’s Row The Third: The Ho Boat[/caption]
Civ 5 - Gods and Kings - Otakuism[/caption]
Saints Row: The Third - My Engineer Mask[/caption]