Flash of Steel

Cap in Hand

October 1st, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Me

I’ve debated doing this for over a year, but the cost of living, cost of blogging and costs of staying up to date on everything in my line of work have pushed me to add a Donate button to the right sidebar.

I don’t do this lightly. I blog for myself, primarily, and – as I’ve said – I would probably podcast now for an audience a quarter the size of what we are getting now. But times are tough, travel costs are growing and I have always counted on the kindness of strangers.

So why donate? Part of it is so I can help cover costs of podcast people. Buying new games to talk about is expensive and review copies are not always available, so every now and then I’d like to help people out with that. It’s also nice to get a little thank you for what little I do here, but really this is about me wanting to keep blogging and podcasting which means finding stuff to write about. Yes, advertising should be covering the server costs, but I am still waiting on a check from one of my advertising partners. (It rhymes with Boogle.)

The blog is still free and I have no intention of making the podcast a subscriber thing. The button is in no way an indication that I feel like I am entitled to anything. Give as much or as little or as nothing as you wish.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 84: Civilization V with Todd Brakke

September 30th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Firaxis, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead

One guest cancels, but his shoes are ably filled by Gameshark’s Todd Brakke as Troy, Julian and Rob hold forth on the game that has already eaten Troy’s life – and he has to keep writing about it for at least another month.

Listen as the team talks about their favorite innovations in Civ 5, how the map brings the game to life, why the AI’s failures are so disappointing, social policy vs civics and hopes for the future.

And Julian is on drugs.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Troy’s Civ review at Gameshark
Rob’s field report at Gamepro
Jumping the Shark

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Patrician IV Review

September 28th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · 1up, Medieval, Review

Though I joked a little about playing it, Patrician IV is actually an interesting little game. First, it is mostly non-violent. There are pirates to eliminate, of course, but the whole idea of the game is building, not destroying. It is even less confrontational than the original Railroad Tycoon, which let you go nuts preying on weaker railroads. Second, it is a trading game with a not-quite-dynamic market, meaning it is much more predictable than these German trading games tend to be; prices at a given city will generally settle to an expected range no matter what else is happening across the League.

If you haven’t read Jim Rossignol’s This Gaming Life
, then you must. It is Rossignol’s experiences of game culture in three different cities – London, Seoul and Reykjavik – and opens a window onto how gamers in different parts of the world are quite distinct in what they value. Strategy gaming – especially wonkish historical strategy gaming – has always been very European, and it is becoming more so as young American gamers see the PC as an MMO and Farmville machine.

If I had a publisher or a work ethic, I would love to write a book about the European strategy gamer.

Europe gives us Dawn of Discovery and Europa the Guild and the Paradox Games and Reign: Conflict of Nations. Though American made RTSes can certainly be wonkish – Age of Empires 3 had its moments, as all great economy based RTSes do – European strategy games appeal to something beyond the mastery of systems angle that we often celebrate on the podcast. It’s almost a juggling act. You have to keep multiple systems moving and pay attention to a thousand different things but if you miss any one of them the whole thing goes to hell.

Patrician IV
has some of that, but as someone who has fallen in love with UIs that tell me everything easily, it doesn’t have everything I want in a game like this.

But I am so glad someone made it.

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November PC Gamer

September 28th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · PCGamer

This month, just my Tactical Advantage column and I spend 600 words on stylized maps like the ones you find in Ancient Trader, Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War and the global zoom in Victoria 2.

I’ve already spent a lot of time on this blog talking about maps. I did a long series last year on maps and game design and we did a podcast about them too. You’ll find lots of smaller posts, too, I’m sure.

I didn’t get into this in the column, but the thing I like most about stylized maps is that you get an eye into how the developers see the period they are dealing with. The pastel national colors in Victoria 2 (and in EU3 once the Divine Wind expansion comes out) speak to old atlases, of which I have too many, and that almost evokes the idea of history as artifact – the past is an heirloom as much as it is something that has molded the present. The tile art in Hannibal is beautiful, but also foreign – the map almost puts us at a distance from the subject matter.

Games with battlefield maps are another matter altogether, and I wonder if we could ever have a battlefield map that was useful and accurate and evocative. Board wargames have done that – can anyone think of a computer game that uses stylized battle maps to convey an era or attitude beyond accuracy?

This month’s PCG also has reviews of Starcraft 2, Civ 5, Making History 2 and Armada 2526.

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Making History Makes Things Clear

September 27th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Industry, WW2

“Did you think the launch was disaster?”
“It was a disaster.”

Earlier this month I spoke to Dave McCool and Chris Parsons from Muzzy Lane about the state of Making History 2. They reached out to me and wanted to acknowledge what went wrong, what went right and how they plan to fix things. Making History 2 was released to a raft of negative reviews in in the spring, though I had some high hopes based on what I saw at PAX East. (I shot this great interview with them there, but the sound was all wonky.)

Muzzy Lane was very upfront about the problems they encountered, what they did wrong and how they are fixing things for users.

On the UI:

“The game UI is similar to MH 1, but every level got an order of magnitude more complex. People would end up doing all their orders from the city menu. We want you to be able to play off the map.”

On the documentation:

“Because of the way we were rapidly changing the UI, it made the documentation obsolete. It shipped very underdocumented for a game of this complexity.”

On their community:

“July was a tough month. We had a lot of people supporting us and a lot of people shredding us. And most people defending us were doing it on faith. That changed in August after we did 15 patches. A lot of people just gave up, but we still have a good core. Now the forum arguments are gameplay discussions.”

On the the business pressures:

“For us the issue was commitments we made to the retail chain down the line. We didn’t need the money now. MH1 was 70/30 sales in favor of retail space over digital and that flipped. If we knew that then, we would have let the retail space go.”

On their profile:

“We would rather have high profile and high negatives than a low profile and low negatives. The shame is you only get one chance at a review.”

Muzzy freely acknowledges that things did not go as planned. They have offered refunds to anyone who wants one, but say that some people back down on the request and just say that they want the game they had always wanted in the first place. They have updated the game and the documentation and the UI constantly since release, and were shooting for a multiplayer relaunch after PAX Prime. You can check on the state of the game here.

This has been a year of strategy games needing or getting major updates. AI War, Elemental, Supreme Commander 2 and, very likely, Civilization 5. Some of these games were very good and just needed fine tuning or AI fixes, some were broken. Making History 2 fit into that latter group, by Muzzy Lane’s own admission.

I played very little MH2, but I think given their frankness I should give it a shot. And if any in the community have comments on Muzzy’s progress and approach, feel free to fill the comments.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 83: RUSE

September 23rd, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Podcast, RTS, Three Moves Ahead, WW2

This week, Rob takes the lead and sings the praises of RUSE, the new WW2 RTS from Ubisoft and Eugen Systems. Troy and Julian push him on the differences between the single and multiplayer components, whether it uses real deception and some rambling bits about World War 2 games in general.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Rob’s review at Gameshark
Rock Paper Shotgun RUSE discussion

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