I go back and forth over whether Rise of Nations is my favorite RTS or the best RTS or one of my three favorite or one of the three best. These are important distinctions.
The University of Illinois, however, has found that playing Rise of Nations helps seniors in a range of other cognitive processing skills, many of which are not directly applicable to playing games.
(seen on The Escapist)
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So simple.
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Like this fall’s Hinterland, there are some interface issues that can interfere with the immersion and there isn’t enough variety in terrain or missions. But this is a good game at a good price and the two titles both point to a reasonable secure future for Tilted Mill’s new mid-size games plan.
If you go into Mosby‘s expecting a wargame, you will be greatly disappointed. The real time battle stuff is more light action RPG than tactical masterpiece. You are best served by making good use of your soldiers’ skills and you will choose missions based on what you can afford and what you can gain. I like the light strategy layer very much, and the two modes are so well integrated that you can easily forgive where the battle engine gets tedious.
A word of warning. There is a steep jump in difficulty once 1864 rolls around. Things are running smoothly and then you are no longer surrounded by Yankee cowards. You will be outmanned and outgunned, so use the early months to practice sneaking up and killing the Union troops as quickly and painlessly as you can. Scouting is essential, as is a well timed saber strike from an expendable horseman.
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No one can apologize like Tom Chick. Swarmed by moronic comments after posting his lists of disappointing, overrated and top games for 2008, he feels the need to politely explain himself.
In short, overrated is not the same as bad. He liked GTA IV, for example, but thought it was overrated. I doubt anyone could disagree, given the breathless and mostly silly reviews that greeted Rockstar’s immigrant crime epic earlier this year.
Chick’s Picks are always a little eccentric; I doubt anyone else would consider Banjo Kazooie one of the top games of the year or even give The Club the time of day. But he always explains what he is saying and why he is saying it. For many gamers, “overrated” has become a shorthand term for “why did people like this piece of crap?”, not “this wasn’t as good as people said”.
I’m also linking because the post’s picture is how I feel some days, too.
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I’m not sure how many people here remember Dune II. I do – quite vividly. I remember sitting in my friend Frank’s dorm room and watching him gather spice to build an army. Then I would play and get eaten by worms. There’s a nice history of the game and its importance at Edge Online.
When I interviewed the guys at Tilted Mill a few months ago, Chris Beatrice made the point that we never used to think about games in term of their genres, but more in terms of their subject matter. This was certainly case for us college kids in the early 90s. Every new game we played was dramatically different in interface and display than whatever we’d been playing before. It probably never occurred to us to put Dune II and Civilization and Populous in the same “strategy” category, let alone divide them into turn-based and real-time.
This is how genres are still born, I bet, not with someone claiming they invented the 4x RTS or RTS/RPG or War/RPG. Thinking of game design in terms of genres is, of course, natural and maybe inevitable. But it also subconsciously ties developers to the conventions of whatever genres he/she is drawing on. One of the things I love most about Spore is that, even in the parts that mimic other genres, it never compromises what it is in service to a role playing or city building plan.
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As we near the end of yet another year, it’s time to look back at Flash of Steel from December 9, 2007 to now.
The state of the blog is strong. Traffic is slowly growing and there have been a few big hits over the year. The five top 2008 posts were my series on ancient games, my opening thoughts on In Nomine, my rebuttal to a Gamasutra post on the future of the RTS (which was itself subsequently published on Gamasutra), last year’s end of the year awards and my recent comments on Elliott’s review symposium idea. (This isn’t counting the main page or my bio.)
As always, search terms reveal something about gamers. My old reviews of Pox Nora and Punic Wars are still big draws, evidence that consumers of this type of independent game seek out reviews. They can’t rely on Metacritic to give them a snapshot, after all. I think that a gaming site somewhere needs to find a way to serve these people, integrating them into the larger gaming environment and also exposing their current readers to a more varied diet. This is free traffic, people. You can’t cover everything, though, since this costs money. And I was in negotiation with one major site to cover wargames for them in a more sustained way before things started imploding over there, so there are sympathetic ears.
A lot of the search terms are for pretty basic information about games. How to play as a particular country in a specific game. Whether an RTS works in TCP/IP. How to disable a particular feature in Civilization IV. Civilization Revolution tips. A surprising number of searches about playing Centurion: Defender of Rome. General tips on how not to suck at real time strategy games. People seem to have a lot of trouble stopping scythed chariots in Rome: Total War. And there are concerns about the minimum system requirements for Empire: Total War.
Lots of homework searches. Five features of Civilization. What was the turning point of the Civil War? History of colonization. Summary of Guns, Germs and Steel. Who did Kennedy beat in 1960?
A steep drop in perversion searches, though. Thank God. People do want to know how to assemble a magazine or why no one likes them. (I can help with the latter.)
In a year which saw me make more money than I usually do at this job (thanks John!), I also spent a lot less time playing and writing about wargames, which is a reflection of both how many wargames there have been (and learning each one is a challenge) and of how no one will pay me to write about them. When you can make more money writing about books than you can about war games, then that’s where your time goes. I hope to change that in 2009.
I regret not finishing my AAR of the Kennedy/Nixon game I was playing with Bruce. My memory failed me. I do enjoy writing these, though, so maybe we’ll pick up something in the New Year. Or I’ll find another opponent for another game. They don’t draw a lot of readers, but I have to do things for me. And for my regulars, all of whom like (and hate) different things about the blog.
Plans for the New Year will also include getting some more guest contributors. There a lot of really smart people in my comments, I should hit one or two of them up for a post or two. Maybe for when I’m on holiday or at a conference.
I also want to get my old CGM reviews up somewhere I can link them. I know that they are being digitized somewhere, but that’s taking longer than I hoped it would.
I want to thank all you guys and gals who read regularly. An audience means I can’t just punt, even though I’m often tempted to do so. Please feel free to make suggestions in the comments.
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