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So Much To Do

March 31st, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Me

Battle Forge – The review is almost done (Fraps is not cooperating with screenshots) and I like a lot of what the game does. The gameplay is very primitive, though, in that it boils down both CCGs and RTSes to their cores, and that can be a little problematic for gamers who want a little more meat.

Demigod – This week’s podcast (to be uploaded soon) is all Demigod. I’ve been playing what is probably the final public beta before the mid-April release, but the build itself may be very differently balanced from the final version. With that obvious caveat, and the further caveats you will hear on TMA, I am already very fond of the game and I hope it is a huge success for Gas Powered Games. I like this beta more than I liked Supreme Commander.

Stormrise – My review copy arrived yesterday. I have a bad feeling about this.

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Il faut cultiver notre jardin

March 28th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Uncategorized

So on Tom’s recommendation in the last podcast, I picked up Rune Factory 2. He was not kidding about the slow start. You begin with a hoe, a watering can and barely enough money for seeds once you sell the herbs that are cluttering up your farmland. Swords are expensive, too. He also warned about how JRPG the dialog was, and, yeah, it’s insufferably cute. I want to stab my hero.

He could have at least warned me about the opening theme song for the DS version.

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Settlers of Catan

March 27th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Board Games

Just because my fellow podcasters hate it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy reading about it.

Teuber created elaborate logic chains and probability matrices in a complex Excel spreadsheet so the videogame developers could see how every possible move and roll of the dice—from the impact of the Robber to the odds of getting wheat in a given scenario—compared. The end result was a sort of blueprint for the game that gave Big Huge Games a head start and showed just how complex the underlying math was. “It was the biggest, gnarliest spreadsheet I had ever seen,” Reynolds says.

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Battleforge Early Moments

March 26th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Electronic Arts

As always, the trick with deck building is balance. You need to have enough low power cards to get them out early and often so you aren’t outnumbered, even high power cards to go for the kill, a mix of magic and unit cards so you don’t have to rely on army maneuvers all the time, and a good sense of which color combo gives you the most bang for your buck.

To use a card, you need a monument that matches its color. Most powerful cards need more than one monument but a few need multiples of the same color. So deck building can be a challenge. If you need two Fire monuments to summon a big bad creature, it makes sense to forgo one of the four elements altogether. But Nature gives you healing, and Ice gives you strong towers and Shadow gives you kickass soul sucking spells.

You can see you cards in action in the Forge/Deck Building area, but I wish there was a better way to get a sense of how your deck will actually play before you venture into the Duelling Arena.

By the way, if anyone wants to duel, email me.

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Alpha Video of Elemental: War of Magic

March 25th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Preview, Stardock

Early video and commentary about Stardock’s upcoming fantasy strategy game:

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Stardock Rolling in Money

March 24th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Ironclad, Stardock

At his GDC presentation this week, Brad Wardell made the case for reviving the hardcore PC market but not neglecting those gamers who still like serious strategy titles.

Best part of that article? His sales data. Yeah, it’s in the interest of the publisher to put the best spin on things, but 10 million in revenue for GalCiv 2 and 8 million in revenue for Sins of a Solar Empire is pretty amazing.

Keep it up guys.

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