It’s a good thing that Heart of the Empire: Rome was delayed till 2007. It would have had a hard time finding room on my schedule. I must have built more acqueducts, plazas and temples this year than in any other, and that’s not even counting the hundreds of hours I sunk into Civilization.
2006 saw three Rome themed city-builders, and not one got universally good reviews. In the “opinions that matter” index, [Read more →]
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I’ve already shown my love and appreciation for Computer Gaming World’s archive of old issues. They even have an index now, so you can keep track of who said what where.
In a fit of Ebay inspired silliness, I went and furthered my obsession with the past by buying 70 back issues of Computer Games aka Computer Games Strategy Plus spanning the period from July 1992 to July 2000. So, not every issue in this range, but a great selection of them, many from the pre-Bauman era and some of the Atkin-interim.
A few things occur to me as I read these old magazines.
The magazines seemed a lot thicker, for one thing. There are a few huge pre-holiday issues, packed with pages. And almost all ads. Ads were everywhere. Remember when Chips and Bits (an affiliated company) would take up four or five pages? And porn. Lots of ads for porn. Strip poker games. Hentai games (recommended for no one younger than 13!), pages of Playboy or Penthouse game listings…
Steve Wartofsky, editor from 1993 to 1997 before he moved on to producing games, would almost always thank a reader for writing in. I’m not sure if he was the first to say that PC Games were doomed, but there is a reply to a letter in a 1994 issue that notes that ease of use of the Sega Genesis and upcoming Playstation could make computers a second tier platform. Even though he (and all real gamers, he implied) liked tweaking games and machines.
The early nineties also had a regular feature about games on the World Wide Web. (Does anyone even use that term anymore?) One of these introduced readers to a British game site called Games Domain – this would become my website of first resort for a very long time.
Just like Ye Olde CGW, wargames are everywhere. 2000 word reviews. Pages of screenshots. Discussions of the historical moment, and not just the game itself.
As a reminder that old games needed patches, too, early issues included a list of “updates”. These were bug fixes. Patches. Some of them pretty critical.
And the writing has gotten a lot better. I don’t mean to single out CGM(S+) here. Go back and read the CGW archive. A lot of reviews and previews were stuck in the “describe the game” mode instead of “describe the experience”. Considering how many pages were given over to hints, “tips and tricks” and walkthroughs, this mindset isn’t too surprising. Even though some of the writers are still around – Tom Chick’s advice for Age of Rifles brings to light his dark life before RTS games consumed him – the craft of writing about games has moved on as the medium has aged.
Anyway, there is a lot of fun stuff in this pile, so my Christmas reading schedule is full.
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I only really care about the PC, so here’s the link. Well, I care about the other systems in an intellectual way, I guess. But the PC is my bread and butter.
No surprises here, really. There’s still the anachronism of turn-based versus real-time, but lots of love there for two of my favorite games this year. Company of Heroes cleans up elsewhere, too. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. No matter how tired you are of killing Nazis, Company of Heroes will amaze you.
I don’t think Khelgar’s all that great, but by and large, the guys at Gamespy put together a good list.
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This months Computer Games Magazine arrived a little later than usual, and with a huge ad for Massive Magazine glued all the way around it. Though it’s great to know that I can get four issues of this wonderful publication for the low, low price of six dollars, I know that if I try to take it off, the whole thing will fall to pieces. And I like saving my magazines, because they make great research material.
It’s heavy with my words this month. Not only my usual column on obscure indie games (this month – Sword and Sandals, Winds of Athena and Toribash), but also my lengthy reviews of Caesar IV and the Warchiefs expansion for Age of Empires III. Also, the usual wargame stuff – WinSPWW2, Stalingrad ’42 and Defending the Reich. The table of contents promises previews of Carriers at War and Battlefront, but that seems to be a typo since you are treated to Dave Long’s views on Maelstrom instead.
Of the wargames, Defending the Reich is the clear winner. It reminds me a little of the campaign mode in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe – there are turns in days, but then the battle unfolds in front of you. In SWotL you could jump into one of the planes and fight the battles, but here you just manage the air war. You set your priorities and hope that you can preserve/destroy enough bombers to last another day.
I’ll say more on my other reviews later. I want to do a big wrap-up on the three Roman city builders in a day or two, as well as emphasize that Warchiefs is the best expansion pack I’ve played this year, though I haven’t tried Dawn of War yet.
Other things to read? There is a great summary of board games you can buy, just barely in time for the holidays, as well as Brett Todd’s review of Thurn und Taxis, a really charming board game that I’ve mentioned before. This is amusing since the letters section also includes replies from readers about board game coverage in the magazine. I like it, myself. People complain about wargame coverage, too, I suspect.
Oh, and two letter writers think Kelly Wand is a girl. Well, one hedges his bets.
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Slitherine Software has been a regular at the Independent Games Festival. In 2005 they took Spartan, in 2006 Legion Arena, winning kudos for their appealing graphics and technical excellence. So, unsurprisingly, Arcane Legions, a strategy RPG has been nominated for Technical Excellence.
You can catch up with Iain McNeil at Gamasutra, where he talks about the development of Arcane Legions.
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Game Daily’s Media Coverage column has the usual Christmas theme this week, and, even though it misspells Mr. Claus, it is mostly a splash of the usual complaints about games journalism. Forget TV coverage, he says, it’s pointless even to try because it’s not interactive enough for gamers. (Not sure what this means for print.) We need a moratorium on “best of lists” – maybe we can make a list of the best lists, instead.
The last part of the column outlines what he thinks are some of the “new rules” in games journalism. The media has changed a lot in the last two years, so the new rules have to be kept in mind.
Here are some of the rules [Read more →]
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