Flash of Steel

Tropico 3 Early Moments

October 16th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · City Builder, Haemimont

I’m reviewing Tropico 3 for Crispy Gamer, but I thought I’d blog some early impressions.

1) It’s a good looking game – not very flashy and even a little blocky at times. But the colors and animations fit the cartoon Cold War they have on display.

2) The reliance on the almanac/ledger for basic information about your island is too old school for this day and age. Why not have something on the map that shows me how different factions respond to me? The church could fly a national flag if they religious people love me, for example. Or maybe a discreet little menu in the lower right corner with symbols of high, low and medium support or strength.

3) This is especially a problem for the superpower relations. I played one game and was warned that the US was ready to invade and overthrow me. But within a couple of minutes my American relations were at 60%. No idea why or when they changed.

4) I love the radio announcer guy, even if he does get repetitive. Plus, hearing El Presidente’s speeches broadcast to the island population is a nice touch.

5) A lot of my warm feelings so far seem to be inspired by nostalgia. It remains to be seen whether the warm feelings continue.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 34 – The EndWar show

October 13th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead, Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s Michael de Plater joins us for a fanboy grilling from Tom Chick. Why EndWar worked, its relative success and why Bruce never got to actually play EndWar for very long.

Apologies in advance for Michael’s sound. His plug-in mic was not working for some reason so he talked to his laptop. Through a tin can. From the distant future. While in a submarine. Fighting robots. He’s that good.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Michael de Plater’s rap sheet
Tom’s great EndWar column
Tom’s review of Brutal Legend – yet another game he thinks is an RTS

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SimMars?

October 13th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Industry, Maxis

I love lost games. I’ve written before about a few of them – Pantheon, Dinosaurs, Zulu Wars…

So the recent “discovery” of a SimMars being developed by Maxis around the time that The Sims became job one is very cool. The domination of The Sims as a franchise and cash cow has a real risk of obscuring how experimental Maxis was at its best. There are, of course, no guarantees that SimMars would have been anything interesting. But it’s nice to know that it once existed.

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Republic of Rome

October 10th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Board Games

This is Bruce’s big idea, and I couldn’t help but get swept up in his mania. Regular listeners/readers probably know that it’s not common for Dr. Geryk to get energized in favor of anything post-Reagan, so his recent call for the two of us to conscript friends/colleagues and the like for a game of the interminable Republic of Rome couldn’t help but energize everyone around him.

Of course, at the time I was the only one around him.

If anyone is curious about RoR, please check out Chris Farrell’s brilliant break down of why the game works. If you can’t win an Ebay auction for the Avalon Hill version, Valley Games has reprinted it. Not sure when it will start shipping.

We’re still organizing a line up for this, but I’m energized by the possibilities here. Our first priority for players will be peers, friends and colleagues we know we can rely on both from past gaming experience and risk of public embarrassment.

The volunteers I have heard from either in personal emails or blog comments are not being forgotten, of course. Every volunteer is appreciated and being added to a list. Even if you don’t make this game session, a successful RoR game means we’ll be doing more of these. And I need more fan service, right?

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The CGM Archives

October 7th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · CGM

It took the new blog from my former colleague Tiffany Martin to point out how much stuff is in the Computer Magazine Online Archive. The default search engine is terrible, and it takes a few tricks to find what’s there. But it does mean I will soon be adding links to my CGM articles listed in my portfolio above.

The article layout is terrible – as well intentioned as the site is, it’s clearly a bit of a rush job and only goes back a few years. Some of the credits are just to “staff”, but I know I wrote the Caesar IV review. But it does mean that I can point to some of my favorite pieces from when I was a freelancer for the best PC gaming magazine there ever was.

Like Bruce Geryk’s brilliant column on Seven Cities of Gold.

Julian Murdoch’s character study of controversial developer Derek Smart.

Any of Brett Todd’s mod columns. (The man is very good at this sort of thing and did for PC Gamer for a while, too.)

And Tom Chick’s review of Shadow of the Colossus – still something I love to read.

And other stuff. Bauman, Long, Wand, Sones, Yans…not all names still active in the business but colleagues forever.

Here’s hoping that Polaris Media can clean it up and get the entire thing up and working right soon.

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Three Moves Ahead 33 — A Lecture from Dr. Geryk

October 6th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead

Sometimes Bruce misses a show he really needs to be on – like the one where we pronounced the death of the Dominions 3 game. This week, Dr. Geryk won’t give up and he makes a compelling argument along the way. Bruce admits to a new way of thinking about games, we talk about reviving our board game blogging (but we need help!) and we talk about wargames we like and don’t like.

We both say mean things that we should take back.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Our Twilight Struggle game
Republic of Rome
1805: Sea of Glory

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