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.

A bearded leader of some so-called civilization met with our Beneficent Empress, Wu Zetian. At the time we did not know where his cities lay.

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.

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.

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.

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)