The thing about teaching high school is that you get a lot of questions.

The thing about teaching high school when your students know that you play games is that you get a lot of questions about playing games.

This afternoon, one student asked me for gift suggestions for his brother. Trying to be a good person, I naturally asked what type of games his brother liked. To my total unsurprise the answer was action games and shooters, i.e., my big glaring weakness. So, I just told him what some of his schoolmates have told me: “You have to get Call of Duty 2.”

I have not played CoD2. I may not for quite some time. And I feel odd recommending a game based purely on what other people are saying. (Of course, a lot of people are saying that Call of Duty 2 is a great game, so I don’t feel that odd.)

A good friend and fellow teacher has come to rely on my opinions ever since I directed him to Pirates! He has since bought Rome and its expansion, both on my suggestion. A mutual friend of ours got into Pirates! as well, but was totally underwhelmed by Rome.

Recommending a game is a delicate task. If you recommend it when you are in the throes of enchantment about a game, you might end up pushing a product that you get tired of shortly. If they push for a suggestion about games or systems I’m not all that familiar with, I have to rely on people I trust not letting me down when they say good things about a game.

Plus, as a reviewer, I can’t say that I’ve never overpraised a title. My online review of Hearts of Iron is more positive than I soon came to be about the game, mostly because I had a seven day deadline to play a complicated WWII sim. But I do know how precious my credibility is to readers and friends.

As great as Pirates! is, it gets old pretty fast. Would I recommend it now? And with what caveats?

And when they start talking about Playstations and Xboxes, what the hell am I supposed to say?

But, being a vain man who likes to see himself as some sort of professional game expert (I have many fantasies), I can’t quite bring myself to answer “I don’t know” when people ask if there are any games out there that they would like. So I will undoubtedly make some bad recommendations this holiday season.

I feel pretty secure about Call of Duty 2, though.

This month’s Computer Games Magazine announces “37 PAGES OF REVIEWS.” That’s twenty games, in case you were wondering. Some big reviews in there too. Quake IV. Age of Empires III. Civilization IV. The Movies.

And a few of mine. I review Down in Flames, Diplomacy and Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion.

There’s so much in this month’s magazine to respond to that I don’t want to deal with the entire issue right here in a single post. All of the columns are strong, there is a flight sim reviewed (!!!) and this month’s Revisionist History on Seven Cities of Gold hits a nail on the head that’s been aching to be hit.

So, now that my review has been published, I’ll talk a bit about Diplomacy. The relatively warm reception it’s been getting has been bugging me for a while. And not just me. But this is something different.

In my review, I make the point that Diplomacy is not really about the rules of the game. It’s about the people you are playing with and interacting with them. And I doubt you can do that against a computer opponent.

I can already hear some of you thinking about how diplomatic relations work so well in other strategy games. But Diplomacy is different because the negotiations aren’t just part of the game; they are the game. There’s nothing but deals, and qualified pacts, and feigned allegiance and the inevitable knife in the back – the knife you know is coming, if not when. Without a convincing human-like opponent, the single-player game never rises to the level where it feels like Diplomacy.

And if you are going to do a straight port of a classic board game, you have to get the feel right. Paradox doesn’t, and there simply isn’t enough in the board game design to make an interesting single player experience. (Oddly, PCGamer‘s Dan Morris endorses Diplomacy specifically for its single player mode.) The game turns into the mathematical movement of armies and navies against a clump of enemies that are usually out of position anyway. If you can survive to the mid-game, you will win.

In fact, without opponents, Diplomacy begins to look a little like its arch-enemy Risk. You just accumulate army after army until you have enough in the right places to push to victory. Yawn.

I will still look forward to the next Paradox production, but I am getting increasingly frustrated with the apparent “shove it out the door” approach that has seemed to afflict recent releases. And they self-publish now, so they can’t blame “the suits”.

Maybe Diplomacy is simply untranslatable beyond building a competent multiplayer setup – which can be done for a lot less money than Paradox spent on grunting avatars for this dog.

Firaxis gaming czar Sid Meier has been awarded a star on the “Walk of Game”. He’ll join fellow inductee John Carmack in getting a developer star alongside last year’s winners Nolan Bushnell and Shigeru Miyamoto.

First, let me be clear that I think that a star decorated sidewalk that celebrates StarCraft, Lara Croft and Link alongside developers is a little silly. Plus, before long, recognized names in development will probably dry up, especially since the industry has moved to larger corporate committee designs and away from the one or two person design operation. And no matter how often American McGee puts his name in front of a game, he’s a long way from star-status.

Still, aside from the AIAS Hall of Fame Awards (Meier was the second inductee – 1999), there is little public recognition of the people that actually design the games. Even game development companies get very little recognition for their efforts. No end of the year summary has “Developer of the Year” or “Best First Game”. The only names recognized at the SpikeTV awards are whatever Hollywood stars slummed to lend their voices to a game – ignoring all the considerable voice talent outside of the A and B list of Tinseltown.

I’ve had the pleasure of briefly meeting Mr. Meier before he and Soren Johnson ganged up on my sorry butt in Civ IV at a press event in Hunt Valley. He’s shorter than you would imagine. But obviously a class act who has worked with or helped develop some of the biggest name in the strategy arena.

So congratulations to Mr. Meier and to Firaxis. I hope none of these awards make him think he can retire. I still want my dinosaur game.

As the breast beating over why gaming reviews aren’t quite masterpieces continues, Bruce Geryk weighs in with a piece that hits some of the same notes that my recent post did, especially the general puzzlement that gaming journalists spend so much time on this stuff.

I’ve been so busy the last few months that the Carnival of Gamers and the Gaming Roundtable have come and gone without comment. This is hardly fair since both represent serious attempts to keep the gaming blog community together, encouraging sharing of material, insights and the usual linking to each others stuff. Plus, they allow regular readers to sample some new and exciting blogs.

In fact, I had almost forgotten about the Carnival altogether until Jonathan Arnold from Game Chair reminded me with a kind inquiry whether I had anything I wanted to contribute. I submitted my recent post on wargame AI and that’s what you’ll find at this month’s Carnival.

And I’m surrounded by some great stuff. Thomas at Mile Zero takes on Chris Crawford’s evolutionary approach to women gamers, Jason Preston at Flicker Gaming examines gaming in episodes, and there’s another dozen posts on top of that.

Not all are great, of course. This is a chance for even the weak or uninteresting to contribute. In many ways, I prefer the Round Table since there is a single topic for all to address – it can really push the writer to his or her best when the post must be focused on someone else’s question.

But I’m glad the Carnival is going strong and I hope I can contribute more regularly in the future. Thanks go out to Seth at Game Chair for organizing and compiling all the entries.