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March CGM

January 26th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · CGM

Already? My magazine never comes this early…

This is the Awards Issue – that annual attempt to sum up a year of gaming in a few blurbs and screenshots. The mag’s writers show their roots by giving seven of the top ten places to strategy games, two to turn based strategy. Buy the issue for the full list.

My meager monthly contributions are my Alt.Games column (Egyptian Addiciton, Putt Mania and Harmotion) and my mostly positive review of Heroes of Annihilated Empires.

Heroes is one of those games that will be easy to hate. It’s not especially beautiful or innovative. And it doesn’t even feel oldschool in the right ways. In fact, it has a lot in common with the GSC monstrosity Alexander. But it still charms. I called the campaign “so bad it’s good” and that’s not a bad summary of the title altogether. There’s something pleasantly ridiculous about it, and, since it passed the Great Reviewer Litmus Test (“Do I want to keep going?”) I would have been a damn liar not to recommend it. It’s a game of subtle charms, if not subtle gameplay.

If you want to go old school, though, check Bruce Geryk’s Revisionist History on Imperialism. His theme is how Imperialism is a monument to gaming ideas that would never pass muster today. It remains one of my favorite games of all time. I liked the first better than the second, which puts me in a minority I think. And Steve Bauman gives 500 words to a casual game about killing things with spelling. Only in Computer Games Magazine…

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Getting at the Core Experience

January 25th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, Paradox

Sequels are harder than they look.

Though launched to the usual glowing reviews, Europa Universalis 3 is going to be a divisive game. You can see it on the official forums. You can see it on the blog of one of Paradox’s biggest fans. And you read it here first many months ago. Some people will miss their history.

My review is in ye olde print a few months hence, so I’ll just say that I like EU3, in spite of the ahistorical stuff. It’s new and improved, but with half the flavor. The debate really comes down to a dispute about what the core experience of a Europa Universalis game is.

It’s easy to forget that the original Europa Universalis had a half dozen events. Treaty of Tordesillas, the Reformation, Calvinism, the Dutch Revolts, the Council of Trent and the American Revolution. That was it. Most of the historical flavor came from these tiny touches and the presence of historical monarchs, leaders and nations. The core experience was to play act through history on a stage with the director giving minimal instruction.

It was the second EU that really turned up the historical heat. Historical events, many with multiple outcomes, gave you a guided tour through the era from 1419 to 1820. It was like a textbook come to life, only actually interesting. Since EU2 came out so soon after the original game, and was a much better game in a hundred little ways, it became the symbol of what the franchise is all about. The history was no longer a background, it could interfere with your plans in very important ways. Inevitably, you could schedule around it – not wasting money on a manufactury, for example, because you know you get one for free in ten years time.

Identifying what is central to your franchise design is not just a matter of knowing what the game is about. If someone asked me to describe Civilization in a hundred words or less, I would talk about the tech tree and the epic span and the enemy nations. I almost certainly wouldn’t mention the word “tile”, even though Soren Johnson has said that recognizing that Civ is tile-based as much as it is turn-based is one of the keys to understanding how the game works. The Age of Empires franchise hasn’t revisited a setting once, but you can see that the core experience is herding your villagers and killing the other guy’s villagers. The core AoE experience is, therefore, not about swords and pikes and muskets except insofar as the game is supposed to be historical.

So what is Europa Universalis? Is EU3 an alternate path from the first game or a betrayal of the second? Freely opine below.

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Apologies

January 24th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Me

Sorry for the silence for the last few days. I’ve been doing some business stuff that took me a little out of my way. Normal blogging will resume momentarily.

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Best selling PC games of 2006

January 19th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Industry

NPD has released sales info on the top ten titles for last year. They are:

1. World of Warcraft
2. The Sims 2
3. The Sims 2 Open for Business Expansion
4. Star Wars: Empire at War
5. The Sims 2 Pets Expansion
6. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
7. Age of Empires III
8. The Sims 2 Family Fun Stuff Expansion
9. Civilization IV
10. The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion

All data included Collector’s Editions as part of the total for a single title.

The list has the usual suspects, with the exception of Empire at War. Sure, it’s Star Wars, but did anyone expect it to beat out Oblivion and three Sims expansions? It’s also interesting that two of the titles (Age of Empires 3 and Civ 4) were released in late 2005, and so any holiday boost from their initial release would have been counted in that year. World of Warcraft defies any attempt at rational analysis and taunts me in my sleep.

The Sims should have its own list somewhere else, because I’d love to know what the next ten games were. Once you get past the legions of fans who want every Sims expansion, a wider view of the industry’s top sellers would be nice. For example, were any “new” games in the top 20? All the top ten are franchise or license games – original in their own way, but not flashes of originality.

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The Persistent RTS

January 19th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · MMO, RTS

Wahoo Studios thinks it has the formula for the elusive real time strategy persistent world. (Read Joh Callaham’s interview with Jason Faller on Firing Squad.) No word about the game, dubbed Saga, on the company site, though.

The interview covers the usual basic bullet point stuff – factions, units, what “persistent” means…what’s not clear is what happens if all your base belongs to someone else. RTS skirmish games end in conquest, this likely won’t if they want to keep players around. RTS combat is also heavily skill dependent in a way that RPGs tend not to be. Can you grind your way to success in a real time strategy game?

Time to send an email to Wahoo, whose Outpost Kaloki is one of the more delightful light sims in recent years. Considering Wahoo’s resumé, this sounds pretty ambitious.

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Neverwinter Nights 2

January 17th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Review, RPGs, StrZone/XtrGamer

You can find my NWN 2 review here at Xtreme Gamer.

Though strategy and wargames are my bread and butter (well, air and water) I like a good RPG and Neverwinter Nights 2 is a good RPG. The review reads really negative because as I was writing it I was annoyed by a lot of things, primarily the knowledge that this could have been so much better. Also, the score more closely reflects the game as it is now – post patch – but I couldn’t let the botched launch get away without a comment.

But Obsidian really fell down on the interface. It is too difficult to do much of anything. I’m not the first person to comment on the lack of drag-select, but this absence really interferes with combat when there are a couple of high level dudes left to kill and you need to corral your mage and thief who were cowering the corner.

Take my warnings about character class seriously. Though you can easily succeed with whatever class you choose, don’t play your first game with someone that will easily die. You will spend most of your time on your knees resting.

There I go again…

The plus side is that the story, as cliche as it is, holds up pretty well. Even the annoying party members (Hello, stupid bard. Useless cleric.) aren’t so grating that you want to kill them. The subquests are well designed and the puzzles are RPG puzzles, not adventure game puzzles, so they are obvious in a clever way. The castle management in chapter 2 is reminiscent of the stronghold stuff in Baldur’s Gate 2. I even liked the voice acting, eventually, and I usually hate the voice acting.

Now that I am getting back into the Elder Scrolls stuff and have played NWN2, I may have to commit more fully to this genre beyond my obsession with roguelikes.

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