September 28, 2010
September 27, 2010
Uh-oh. Eric’s been drinking the Eurogame Kool-Aid
If you’re not a gamer, you can safely ignore this posting.
Still here? Good. Here’s Eric S. Raymond losing his religion:
I’m what people in the strategy-gaming hobby call a grognard. The word is literally French for “grumbler”, historically used for Napoleonist diehards who never reconciled themselves to the fall of L’Empereur even after 1815, and nowadays refers to guys who cut their teeth on the classic, old-school hex-grid wargames of the 1970s.
As a grognard, I’m expected to grumble dyspeptically about the superiority of the huge, heavy, elaborately simulationist two-player wargames we used to play back in the day, and bemoan how fluffy and social the modern wave of multiplayer Eurogames are. Sure, they’ve got four-color printing and unit counters you don’t have to use tweezers to pick up, but where are my pages and pages of combat resolution tables? Where are my hairsplitting distinctions between different types of self-propelled assault gun? O tempora! O mores!
But you know what? Times change, and game designers have actually learned a few things in the last forty years. In this essay I’m going to revisit two games I’ve reviewed previously (Commands and Colors: Ancients and Memoir ‘44) and take a closer look at two others: War Galley, and Conflict of Heroes. These games exemplify how very much things have changed, and how little point there really is in pining for the old-school games any more. Yes, I may forfeit my old-fart credentials by saying it, but … I think the golden age of wargaming is now.
September 23, 2010
Meh. Civ V isn’t that addictive . . . is it really 2am?
I received my copy of Civilization V from Amazon.ca yesterday, but I was in town all evening, so I didn’t sit down to start installing it until 10:30. I figured I could install it, twiddle about with the new UI, and still get to sleep by midnight. I probably could have, except you can’t play Civ V without registering an account with Steam. After creating the account, you apparently have to download the whole game (no idea why, as there’s a DVD-ROM in the package), and because I was online at peak hour for west coast gamers, the connection speed left more than a bit to be desired.
At around 11:30, the game finished downloading and I was able to actually start. “Oh,” I said to myself, “they’ve included tutorials. That’s nice of them. I guess that’ll cover the changed UI elements. I’ll try ’em.” I spent the next two hours just playing the tutorial scenarios.
It certainly does have the “gotta play just one more turn” thing down pat. It’ll do nicely to cover the gap until Guild Wars 2 is released.
September 22, 2010
Civ V review
No, not by me . . . my copy hasn’t arrived yet. It’s from the Guardian:
Fans of Sid Meir’s seminal strategy game tend to be purists — one reason why 2008’s Civilization Revolution was so panned by some for slimming down the formula in just about every respect.
Yet for all its limitations, the console version addressed many of the problems that the old PC franchise had ignored for too long, and the proof is here for all to see. Civilization V returns to Civ IV‘s epic scale but combines it with CivRev‘s emphasis on simplicity and clarity. As a result, this is probably the best (or at least the most user friendly) version of the game since the original and certainly the best-equipped for the now-obligatory multiplayer mode.
The first thing PC owners will notice is the interface. Heavily influenced by CivRev, it’s a thing of minimalist beauty designed to display information clearly and succinctly. This also has the effect of allowing pride of place to the new-look World Map, which is now a thing of shimmering beauty as your empire develops into a tableau of fields, factories and road networks. Zooming in and out is smoother than before and it makes the game annoyingly easy to keep playing.
If nothing else, it should keep me occupied until Guild Wars 2 is released.
Update: Just got an email from Amazon.ca, providing me with a bonus code for the “Cradle of Civilization Map Pack”. I ordered this long enough ago that I don’t even remember what this might be (or, more likely, it was added after I pre-ordered).
Update, the second (at 23:15): Yep, my copy arrived tonight. While I was in town for an appointment. Can anyone explain why they bother to ship you a DVD-ROM when you have to download the game through Steam anyway? Because it’s peak time somewhere in North America, I’ve been downloading for over half an hour and just got to 47%. At this rate, I’ll maybe get half an hour of gaming before I turn into a pumpkin . . .
September 21, 2010
The Guild, Season 4 Episode 10
September 18, 2010
“Taste my Pirate Patty”
September 14, 2010
September 7, 2010
August 31, 2010
The Guild, Season 4 Episode 7
August 30, 2010
Charles S. Roberts, RIP
The Armorer passed on some sad news today:
Charles S. Roberts, one of my enduring heroes, has passed. The company he founded, Avalon Hill, and the products it produced, awoke a part of me that still earns me gainful employment to this day. I may have to go downstairs and break out Afrika Corps, or Gettysburg, and play a game in his honor. All you role players out there, heirs to Dungeons and Dragons? You owe Mr. Roberts thanks, too — like me, Gary Gygax got his start with Avalon Hill wargames.
August 26, 2010
August 24, 2010
The Guild, Season 4 Episode 6
GW2 links from Gamescom
Arenanet had the first live demo of Guild Wars 2 at the Gamescom event in Germany this weekend. Rubi Beyer couldn’t attend, but still feels that she’s getting plenty of information about the upcoming release:
I did not go to Gamescom. I was kind of not anticipating last week at all, because I envisioned it as a week of me looking at all the wonderful things I couldn’t have, much like a starving orphan outside a bakery (or maybe a homeless orphan in some player’s home instance). I figured it would be very un-fun.
In fact, the opposite was true. Sure, I couldn’t play hands-on, but I enjoyed all the Guild Wars 2 news flooding out of Gamescom just the same. I imagine being there would have made it impossible to take in all of these details from every direction — it just would have been too overwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not sour grapes. I would have loved to be there! But since I couldn’t, I’m really enjoying my bird’s-eye view, so to speak. Even from this point of view, the amount of new information we have is nearly impossible to keep track of, so for Flameseeker Chronicles this week, I thought I’d take all that we’ve heard this week and try to distill it into a guide on where you can find information.
It’s felt a bit like trying to take an octopus and 15 of his closest friends and convince them all to fit comfortably in one small sandwich baggie, but I’ve done my best. Follow along after the jump to see where you can find the latest and greatest from Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom.
August 23, 2010
Sex sells, even especially in MMOs
Justin Olivetti acknowledges the obvious:
The other day, a group of us in the Massively office watched the latest TERA demo video in a sort of horrified awe as the skimpily clad character ran with her fanny flying in the wind and gyrated her hips to cast a spell. It sparked an intense discussion among us as to the fine line between sexing a game up and over-sexing it just to draw in stereotypical drooling male gamers.
It’s a well-known adage that sex sells, and like it or hate it, attractive characters and skimpy outfits have been a part of MMORPGs for quite some time now. From World of Warcraft‘s seductive succubus to Age of Conan‘s topless extravaganza to Star Trek Online‘s character creation “breast slider,” game studios tend to play the sex card first and frequently to pull in customers. This is why, for example, male armor tends to always be practical (if oddly flamboyant) while female armor isn’t even big enough to protect one’s dignity, never mind one’s internal organs.
