I have to apologise to Firaxis (developers of Civ Rev) for suggesting that the British came in for unfair treatment in the game. I have finished the game I was playing when I last wrote on this subject and have started a new one as the Egyptians and it seems that all nations are described as pretentious snobs by their enemies.
I also feel obliged to mention that it does make a difference which nation you play as. Comparing the British to the Egyptians, the British rifleman unit has one extra attack point (four instead of three) but the Egyptians can glean more trade and one food from a dessert region from the start of the game. These are not the only differences, just examples.
Civilization Revolution scores over many other strategy games in the important respect that you can crush your opponents quite quickly once you are powerful, whereas in some games there can be long periods where you have a lot of housekeeping to do once you have built a large nation.
I have been unable to put this game down in the last few days but feel as if I might be exhausting its entertainment value at least for the time being but I have won the God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP that I mentioned that I had bid on on ebay two entries ago and the seller claims to have posted it so hopefully I will have that soon.
I have also recently played the demo versions of Patapon and Little Big Planet for PSP. The first one appears excellent and I certainly mean to buy it some time and hopefully I will write about it in the future. I am most enthusiastic about LBP though. The content is clearly different to the PS3 version, the game's mechanisms seem just the same and it looks stunning on the small screen so that is probably the next game I want to get.
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Monday, 26 August 2013
Civilization Revolution for Nintendo DS
Usually, I don't play a game on a handheld console if it's available for PS3 or PC but I had to stick to my rule about only playing on handheld consoles for the next two months and I had a copy of this on the shelf which is currently have for sale on ebay so I thought I'd give it a go. I hope nobody buys it too soon.
This is a great little game and even though it could be regarded as a watered down version of Civilization IV it has plenty of depth and there is a lot to think about.
The game features food and resources. If you collect a lot of food in a city the city will grow more quickly but if you collect more resources then buildings and military units grow faster. A larger city can, generally speaking, generate more food and resources so the temptation is to prioritise food production but some buildings can speed up food production so perhaps creating those first by putting resource production first should be the tactic. In truth it depends on a city's circumstances and there are other things to consider such as science, which you need to produce to make buildings and units available, and culture which makes a city's sphere of influence grow and protects it from leaving your nation and joining another.
It appears that it would be possible to play and win an entire game without generating any cash at all but, as in life, money can be a useful thing to have and is also generated by cities but, unlike food and resources, it goes into a general pot for the whole nation.
Most of the game takes place on the touch screen and this is where you issue your orders; both directing your cities and moving your military units. When you send military units into battle the fight is played out in a brief tableau on the upper screen which is otherwise just used to carry information. Military units can be stacked on a single square or all in the same city and when three of the same kind are stacked they can form an army whose power is as great as all three summed. Unit's of different types have different strengths and weaknesses and can develop to be stronger still through winning victories. The best military units I can make at the moment are cannon, which have an attack of 7 and a defence of 2 and riflemen who have an attack of 4 and defence of 5. If you put one of each on the same square then the better defender will defend first if they are attacked and if you keep them together as you move them the superior attacker can be used to assault enemy units.
I am playing this scenario as the British, though it is not clear that this makes any difference in terms of development but I cannot be sure either way. I started with Monarchy as my system of government and perhaps it would have been something else with a different country. One thing that I cannot help wondering and which rankles slightly is that when my AI opponents address me they assure me that the " pretentious snobbery" of my people will soon be put to an end. Would I be accused of this if I was playing as another nation? Perhaps the French are called arrogant and the Germans officious.
I will forgive this and continue to enjoy Civilization Revolution. I am writing this on a bank holiday Monday and was very tempted to break my rule and play some Fallout 3 yesterday but this game saved me from that so a bit of negative national stereotyping while not being forgivable can at least be overlooked.
This is a great little game and even though it could be regarded as a watered down version of Civilization IV it has plenty of depth and there is a lot to think about.
The game features food and resources. If you collect a lot of food in a city the city will grow more quickly but if you collect more resources then buildings and military units grow faster. A larger city can, generally speaking, generate more food and resources so the temptation is to prioritise food production but some buildings can speed up food production so perhaps creating those first by putting resource production first should be the tactic. In truth it depends on a city's circumstances and there are other things to consider such as science, which you need to produce to make buildings and units available, and culture which makes a city's sphere of influence grow and protects it from leaving your nation and joining another.
 |
| Placing citizens on particular squares causes them to generate the food, resources or trade characteristic of that square. If a citizen is not placed at all they will generate resources and trade. |
It appears that it would be possible to play and win an entire game without generating any cash at all but, as in life, money can be a useful thing to have and is also generated by cities but, unlike food and resources, it goes into a general pot for the whole nation.
Most of the game takes place on the touch screen and this is where you issue your orders; both directing your cities and moving your military units. When you send military units into battle the fight is played out in a brief tableau on the upper screen which is otherwise just used to carry information. Military units can be stacked on a single square or all in the same city and when three of the same kind are stacked they can form an army whose power is as great as all three summed. Unit's of different types have different strengths and weaknesses and can develop to be stronger still through winning victories. The best military units I can make at the moment are cannon, which have an attack of 7 and a defence of 2 and riflemen who have an attack of 4 and defence of 5. If you put one of each on the same square then the better defender will defend first if they are attacked and if you keep them together as you move them the superior attacker can be used to assault enemy units.
I am playing this scenario as the British, though it is not clear that this makes any difference in terms of development but I cannot be sure either way. I started with Monarchy as my system of government and perhaps it would have been something else with a different country. One thing that I cannot help wondering and which rankles slightly is that when my AI opponents address me they assure me that the " pretentious snobbery" of my people will soon be put to an end. Would I be accused of this if I was playing as another nation? Perhaps the French are called arrogant and the Germans officious.
I will forgive this and continue to enjoy Civilization Revolution. I am writing this on a bank holiday Monday and was very tempted to break my rule and play some Fallout 3 yesterday but this game saved me from that so a bit of negative national stereotyping while not being forgivable can at least be overlooked.
Friday, 23 August 2013
Exit for PSP
This game may never have set the world on fire and there might now be infinite platform puzzlers on many different platforms, but I Exit it is worth more than the 65% awarded to it by Play: not that I ever take any notice of them.
I have so far solved thirty five of Exit's one hundred puzzles. New mechanics and ideas are still being introduced. Stages 31-40 are dark environments where you cannot see the map to begin with, except for the basic layout. Usually there is a torch to be found and sometimes a light switch to illuminate the whole area. We have already encountered electricity, water, fire, locked doors and destructible walls and the means to overcome these things - sometimes these means are in difficult to reach places. There is a fair amount of pushing boxes around to reach high places.
The purpose of the game is to escape the level, and to assist trapped and helpless companions to escape. The companions have no pretensions towards being AI controlled co-op style assistants; they walk blindly after you and will get themselves burned or electrocuted if you don't take good care of them. You can give them directions from a distance and they can carry and use objects but always have to be given very specific instructions.
Companions come in three kinds each of which has its own skills and shortcomings. Kids, for example, can crawl through small spaces but cannot climb very high without assistance, are susceptible to drowning (Limbo style) in shallow water and move slowly. There are also young adults who are similar to protagonist Mr Esc. and reasonably versatile but have no skills which Mr Esc. does not have, though they can help him to push heavy objects. Older adults, who are portrayed as fat, can push heavy objects by themselves but cannot climb onto high places without help from two young adults, one of whom can be our hero. Companions are characterful, if a bit needy and pathetic sometimes and do add a lot to the game.
All these mechanics make for an interesting and sometimes very challenging set of puzzles. The only shortcoming is that sometimes it is the game's weaknesses which make the puzzle hard, rather than it's strengths. The rules regarding pushing boxes around, which I won't attempt to explain hear, are the most frequent example. Sometimes it would take a chess grand master to see in advance the precise sequence of moves needed to complete the puzzle, especially in the dark. This is mainly because some moves are irreversible.
Despite this, the game's strengths are used well sometimes and there is a substantial amount of interesting and absorbing gaming here and given that I got a good condition boxed copy of the game with its manual on ebay for £3.97 I would recommend Exit to anyone.
I have never played any God of War game so I have bid on a Chains of Olympus for PSP on ebay but I don't know if I've won it yet.
I have so far solved thirty five of Exit's one hundred puzzles. New mechanics and ideas are still being introduced. Stages 31-40 are dark environments where you cannot see the map to begin with, except for the basic layout. Usually there is a torch to be found and sometimes a light switch to illuminate the whole area. We have already encountered electricity, water, fire, locked doors and destructible walls and the means to overcome these things - sometimes these means are in difficult to reach places. There is a fair amount of pushing boxes around to reach high places.
 |
| Well, I think that's pretty clear... |
The purpose of the game is to escape the level, and to assist trapped and helpless companions to escape. The companions have no pretensions towards being AI controlled co-op style assistants; they walk blindly after you and will get themselves burned or electrocuted if you don't take good care of them. You can give them directions from a distance and they can carry and use objects but always have to be given very specific instructions.
Companions come in three kinds each of which has its own skills and shortcomings. Kids, for example, can crawl through small spaces but cannot climb very high without assistance, are susceptible to drowning (Limbo style) in shallow water and move slowly. There are also young adults who are similar to protagonist Mr Esc. and reasonably versatile but have no skills which Mr Esc. does not have, though they can help him to push heavy objects. Older adults, who are portrayed as fat, can push heavy objects by themselves but cannot climb onto high places without help from two young adults, one of whom can be our hero. Companions are characterful, if a bit needy and pathetic sometimes and do add a lot to the game.
All these mechanics make for an interesting and sometimes very challenging set of puzzles. The only shortcoming is that sometimes it is the game's weaknesses which make the puzzle hard, rather than it's strengths. The rules regarding pushing boxes around, which I won't attempt to explain hear, are the most frequent example. Sometimes it would take a chess grand master to see in advance the precise sequence of moves needed to complete the puzzle, especially in the dark. This is mainly because some moves are irreversible.
Despite this, the game's strengths are used well sometimes and there is a substantial amount of interesting and absorbing gaming here and given that I got a good condition boxed copy of the game with its manual on ebay for £3.97 I would recommend Exit to anyone.
I have never played any God of War game so I have bid on a Chains of Olympus for PSP on ebay but I don't know if I've won it yet.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Gran Turismo 5: Academy Edition and Borderlands
I have been playing GT5 on the PS3 lately and it is a hard task master.
In the career mode there are several different types of challenge. The simplest (though not necessarily easiest) are the tutorials which often involve just driving a short stretch of track in a precise way in order to learn to take the best line at corners or similar. To get the gold trophy requires great precision but I am a masochist and always make myself do them repeatedly until I've cracked it.
Seasonal Events vary in difficulty and tend to require a specific vehicle type which I am not always able to access which is a bit annoying but they are enjoyable, if generally tough, races.
A-Spec Events represent your main career progression as a driver. I have only done the beginner level events so far and they are fun and not too challenging but there are four harder levels to go.
That represents most of what I've done so far. There are other things to do but I've not got into them enough to write about them.
I've been back to playing Borderlands on the PC. I have no saved games on my existing PC and I wanted to do a quick play through so that I can then buy and play the extra content.
This time I'm playing as the soldier and as with my previous play throughs I am constantly forgetting to use his special ability which is deploying a turret which has a shield which I can crouch behind.
I have been enjoying the game and as usual am finding it highly playable. I've just killed sledge and then been to the Arid Hills to find the gun parts required to complete a job from the Firestone Bounty Board. It's a bit disappointing that on visiting the job board after returning from the mine two of the four new jobs to be found there involve collecting the parts of a gun which have been scattered around but this is a small gripe about an excellent game.
I received the game Exit for PSP through the post today. This heralds the started of my latest gaming experiment. For the next two months, up to and including October 16th, I am not allowing myself to play any game other than on a handheld console. I have a PSP, a DS and a Gameboy Advance SP and am not intending to buy any new hardware so I hope none of these breaks down.
I now have four games for the PSP (one of which I've completed), one for the DS and five for the Gameboy Advance so I reckon I'll be buying some new ones.
In the career mode there are several different types of challenge. The simplest (though not necessarily easiest) are the tutorials which often involve just driving a short stretch of track in a precise way in order to learn to take the best line at corners or similar. To get the gold trophy requires great precision but I am a masochist and always make myself do them repeatedly until I've cracked it.
Seasonal Events vary in difficulty and tend to require a specific vehicle type which I am not always able to access which is a bit annoying but they are enjoyable, if generally tough, races.
A-Spec Events represent your main career progression as a driver. I have only done the beginner level events so far and they are fun and not too challenging but there are four harder levels to go.
That represents most of what I've done so far. There are other things to do but I've not got into them enough to write about them.
I've been back to playing Borderlands on the PC. I have no saved games on my existing PC and I wanted to do a quick play through so that I can then buy and play the extra content.
This time I'm playing as the soldier and as with my previous play throughs I am constantly forgetting to use his special ability which is deploying a turret which has a shield which I can crouch behind.
I have been enjoying the game and as usual am finding it highly playable. I've just killed sledge and then been to the Arid Hills to find the gun parts required to complete a job from the Firestone Bounty Board. It's a bit disappointing that on visiting the job board after returning from the mine two of the four new jobs to be found there involve collecting the parts of a gun which have been scattered around but this is a small gripe about an excellent game.
I received the game Exit for PSP through the post today. This heralds the started of my latest gaming experiment. For the next two months, up to and including October 16th, I am not allowing myself to play any game other than on a handheld console. I have a PSP, a DS and a Gameboy Advance SP and am not intending to buy any new hardware so I hope none of these breaks down.
I now have four games for the PSP (one of which I've completed), one for the DS and five for the Gameboy Advance so I reckon I'll be buying some new ones.
Friday, 16 August 2013
The Game's The Thing...
I can't remember exactly what caused me to recently search for the letter a on the Zavvi.com website. I think I had been puzzled by it's interpretation of a search term I'd put in so I tried just searching "a" to see if the result would be any item with the letter a in at all - in other words, most items.
As it turned out, it was not. The results given were all items featuring the word "a" (the indefinite article if you've been to university). Curious, though what about I don't know, I searched for the definite article instead ("the") and noticed straight away that there were huge numbers of Blu-Rays and DVDs in the search results but not that many games. I thought that there would probably be more films for sale on the site and when I checked there were, but not by enough to account for the disparity of "the" results.
What I'm getting round to saying is that 1331 out of 4557 Blu-rays had the word the in the title but only 51 out of 402 PS3 game titles did. That is 29.21% of Blu-rays and only 12.69% of PS3 games. To draw a slightly questionable conclusion from this, films are more than twice as likely to have a "the" in the title than games.
Looking down the list of games featuring "the", there were a reasonable number of "The Ultimate Edition", "The complete Edition", "Game of the Year Edition" etc. In other words, "the" had not featured in the original title for those games.
In the list of Blu-Rays, it was immediately striking that many of them started with "The", a feature which not many of the games shared and I think here I can draw my only substantial conclusion (assuming any of this is worth writing), film titles are chosen to inject one important quality which games are less likely to require...
(pause)
...drama.
I can imagine films called The Borderlands, The Dishonoured (I will spell it correctly), The Assassin's Creed or even The Little Big Planet but game titles work differently. I could just as easily imagine chopping the "Thes" off film names and giving them to games: Godfather, Usual Suspects, Bourne Identity and (and I think this is the best illustration), Deer Hunter.
The film The Deer Hunter is about a guy who happens to hunt deer but also falls in love with his mate's girlfriend then goes off to Vietnam to fight in the war but when he comes home his mate stays in Saigon with post traumatic stress but our bloke soon realises he can't stay at home and enjoy a life there (including a relationship with his friends girl, who is now interested) until he's done everything in his power to bring his friend home.
A game called Deer Hunter would involve hunting deer and slowly improving your skills at hunting. It might involve playing a guy who starts out hunting deer but goes on to shooting people for some reason but it would not be the personal story about an individual and the unique events that happen to him that the film is, it would be an ongoing process which most players would not get to the end of.
That lack of specificity is the reason a game has no "The" and a film does.
As it turned out, it was not. The results given were all items featuring the word "a" (the indefinite article if you've been to university). Curious, though what about I don't know, I searched for the definite article instead ("the") and noticed straight away that there were huge numbers of Blu-Rays and DVDs in the search results but not that many games. I thought that there would probably be more films for sale on the site and when I checked there were, but not by enough to account for the disparity of "the" results.
What I'm getting round to saying is that 1331 out of 4557 Blu-rays had the word the in the title but only 51 out of 402 PS3 game titles did. That is 29.21% of Blu-rays and only 12.69% of PS3 games. To draw a slightly questionable conclusion from this, films are more than twice as likely to have a "the" in the title than games.
Looking down the list of games featuring "the", there were a reasonable number of "The Ultimate Edition", "The complete Edition", "Game of the Year Edition" etc. In other words, "the" had not featured in the original title for those games.
In the list of Blu-Rays, it was immediately striking that many of them started with "The", a feature which not many of the games shared and I think here I can draw my only substantial conclusion (assuming any of this is worth writing), film titles are chosen to inject one important quality which games are less likely to require...
(pause)
...drama.
I can imagine films called The Borderlands, The Dishonoured (I will spell it correctly), The Assassin's Creed or even The Little Big Planet but game titles work differently. I could just as easily imagine chopping the "Thes" off film names and giving them to games: Godfather, Usual Suspects, Bourne Identity and (and I think this is the best illustration), Deer Hunter.
The film The Deer Hunter is about a guy who happens to hunt deer but also falls in love with his mate's girlfriend then goes off to Vietnam to fight in the war but when he comes home his mate stays in Saigon with post traumatic stress but our bloke soon realises he can't stay at home and enjoy a life there (including a relationship with his friends girl, who is now interested) until he's done everything in his power to bring his friend home.
A game called Deer Hunter would involve hunting deer and slowly improving your skills at hunting. It might involve playing a guy who starts out hunting deer but goes on to shooting people for some reason but it would not be the personal story about an individual and the unique events that happen to him that the film is, it would be an ongoing process which most players would not get to the end of.
That lack of specificity is the reason a game has no "The" and a film does.
Monday, 12 August 2013
Indie Games Good - AAA Bad
It seems to be the fashion in the gaming media to regard indie games as being organic and artful in a way that triple A titles cannot achieve.
Okay, so good art is rarely made by committee and there are large teams working on most big games, but if an individual has an inspired idea for a 30 hour open world action adventure it is not possible for them to make it themselves and they have to get the backing they need to get a team working on it.
At the other end of the scale it is perfectly possible for an individual or small group to decide to try to milk the smart phone app or PC market for all it is worth and make a series of slap dash efforts and heavily publicise them; EA are not the only people who might be seen as cashing in on the games marked.
I am not claiming that this is what always happens when an indie is successful. I'm sure that Thomas Was Alone is an excellent game for what it is, but is it fair to compare it to a detailed and lengthy triple A game which has had so much more work put into it.
Perhaps that is the real point. Good and bad art come in all shapes and sizes but those who put in a lot of work deserve some credit, even if their results are not always great.
But most significantly, AAA titles should be considered for the very best review scores even if they are made by a developer with an unfashionable reputation and are the fifth in a previously mediocre series and are published by one of those publishers often thought of as most soulless.
Okay, so good art is rarely made by committee and there are large teams working on most big games, but if an individual has an inspired idea for a 30 hour open world action adventure it is not possible for them to make it themselves and they have to get the backing they need to get a team working on it.
At the other end of the scale it is perfectly possible for an individual or small group to decide to try to milk the smart phone app or PC market for all it is worth and make a series of slap dash efforts and heavily publicise them; EA are not the only people who might be seen as cashing in on the games marked.
I am not claiming that this is what always happens when an indie is successful. I'm sure that Thomas Was Alone is an excellent game for what it is, but is it fair to compare it to a detailed and lengthy triple A game which has had so much more work put into it.
Perhaps that is the real point. Good and bad art come in all shapes and sizes but those who put in a lot of work deserve some credit, even if their results are not always great.
But most significantly, AAA titles should be considered for the very best review scores even if they are made by a developer with an unfashionable reputation and are the fifth in a previously mediocre series and are published by one of those publishers often thought of as most soulless.
Monday, 5 August 2013
More on Volition's Saints Row The Third and on THQ
I have been surprised since I came back to playing Saint's Row the Third last week that it is as good as it is.
Okay, so the "plot" is not good and is just designed to feebly join the missions into some sort of coherent whole but the missions themselves are fun but challenging
What would normally be considered side missions are part of what you have to do to complete the game in SR3. As I explained in the previous entry, you have to buy properties, clear out gang operations and perform various other violent missions which are marked on the map. The completion of each of these causes another small area of the city to come under your sway.
Occasionally, when you are in a particular area, your cell phone will ring and you will be called upon to go and defend or attack a location where another gang is trying to impose itself. There will be several waves of enemies and to get through each wave you will have to kill a certain number. It is always tempting to attempt to run over them in whatever car you arrive in and as a started this is fine but if you keep going back over them in the same car in will get badly damaged and start to burn. If it carries on being fired on you might not have time to get out before it explodes and if you have already taken a few yourself then the explosion will kill you. If you can get through all the waves of enemies then this will also turn a section of city to your control.
I hate the rival gang called the Deckers. One of their specialist types of enemy blinks very rapidly from one location to another and is very hard to kill as a result. They attack either with a melee weapon that looks a bit like an (ice) hockey stick or with (I think - they so rarely stay still long enough to tell), dual Uzis. When you are being fired on from all sides by normal enemies and one of these enemies comes from nowhere and knocks you down with a hockey stick it feels more than a little unfair.
The last thing I'll say about SR3 for now is about the picture above.
Okay, so the "plot" is not good and is just designed to feebly join the missions into some sort of coherent whole but the missions themselves are fun but challenging
What would normally be considered side missions are part of what you have to do to complete the game in SR3. As I explained in the previous entry, you have to buy properties, clear out gang operations and perform various other violent missions which are marked on the map. The completion of each of these causes another small area of the city to come under your sway.
Occasionally, when you are in a particular area, your cell phone will ring and you will be called upon to go and defend or attack a location where another gang is trying to impose itself. There will be several waves of enemies and to get through each wave you will have to kill a certain number. It is always tempting to attempt to run over them in whatever car you arrive in and as a started this is fine but if you keep going back over them in the same car in will get badly damaged and start to burn. If it carries on being fired on you might not have time to get out before it explodes and if you have already taken a few yourself then the explosion will kill you. If you can get through all the waves of enemies then this will also turn a section of city to your control.
I hate the rival gang called the Deckers. One of their specialist types of enemy blinks very rapidly from one location to another and is very hard to kill as a result. They attack either with a melee weapon that looks a bit like an (ice) hockey stick or with (I think - they so rarely stay still long enough to tell), dual Uzis. When you are being fired on from all sides by normal enemies and one of these enemies comes from nowhere and knocks you down with a hockey stick it feels more than a little unfair.
 |
| Saints Row - The Present and the Past. |
On the right is the version of the box-art for the game that I have and on the left is the version you can buy at the time of writing (see link in left column for my ebay store). There are many differences between the two images but the most obvious one to me is in the bottom right corner of the box where the Deep Silver logo replaces the THQ one. I was going to write that I was sorry about the demise of THQ but I am not sure what to say. The list of second rate IPs they funded (most of which have now been off-loaded onto Nordic games - though I don't mean to imply that Supreme Commander is anything but brilliant) is substantial and the good games that were in their care will all be going to good homes - or at least to new homes where they will have a chance. I only hope that those which are less good will not be followed up on. If Nordic restarted the discontinued Red Faction series or failed to end the mediocre MX vs ATV it would be an opportunity missed. I also hope that where series are carried on they will be taken in new directions.
While THQ's end is obviously a great shame for those employees who have trouble finding new work it is perhaps a clean section on the messy slate of the games industry.
I have bought a Gran Turismo 5 on ebay, a game which I am very surprised not to have played yet, and am quietly hoping it will arrive tomorrow. I will write about it soon.
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