Troy, Tom and Bruce spend an hour talking about city builders as ant farm games. Why didn’t they talk about Dawn of Discovery two weeks ago? What’s up with Cities XL? Is SimCity Societies a neglected classic or a misfire of epic proportions?
And, most importantly, does Bruce know any games made after 1984?
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I think that if you are using the word “fuck” four times in a preview that you really need to find another way of expressing yourself. And writing that something “screams Blizzard” isn’t very helpful considering they haven’t done an RTS in half a decade and I don’t see anything in the screenshots that scream much of anything.
But Garratt’s Starcraft II preview does have a helpful rundown of the first few missions in the campaign, none of which seem especially original or surprising. The videos and screenshots of the game convince me that it will have nice colors and explosions, but I’m still a little cautious about embracing it.
Part of the problem is the first Starcraft. It was the RTS that changed everything. Given how much the genre has changed over the years, it will be much harder for Starcraft to have that kind of impact. Blizzard is one of the most talented studios in the business and I have little doubt that it will be a shiny and impressive piece of programming.
I haven’t read much beyond the name itself, though, that makes me sit up and take notice. Maybe I need to get a hands on to be sold (and I wasn’t invited) but this is one of those all to frequent instances, I think, where nostalgia is fueling gamers’ attention.
Sometimes a shiny and impressive piece of programming is enough, of course.
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Thanks to Nabeel Burney of Slowdown for pointing out this upcoming XNA game to me. Use brush strokes to control armies on a parchment map.
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Now that the two big Paradox reviews are out of the way, I have to turn my attention to the things I have been neglecting. And it’s a long list to catch up on.
1) Crown of Glory: Emperor’s Edition: Gil Renberg, the co-designer, has been after me to give this game another look. I wasn’t too fond of the original, and he promises improvements. There are naval battles now, which should be fun since we will be podcasting about this before too long. And the map and economy are clearer. Still has some UI issues that are bred in the bone, I think, but I need to spend more than a couple of hours on it to get up to speed.
2) AI War – Fleet Command: Tom Chick wrote about this game in his recent Crispy Gamer column and it’s been sitting on my hard drive for a week or so untouched until a couple of days ago. I may have to rethink my bias against space based games. Though not as grand as Sins of a Solar Empire, it has some of the same vibe.
3) Theatre of War 2: I had some major performance issues with this when it came out, so I put it aside. Given how poorly ToW 1 worked with dual core machines, you would think they would fix that here. At least the original had an option to tell the computer to use only one core for the game. I can’t find that here, but, to be honest, I haven’t delved into the official forum for help. The very helpful Battlefront PR guy was unable to give me a solution, but this isn’t his job. I was really enjoying what I saw but I need to give it more time before I feel I can comment.
4) Battlestations: Pacific: I need a game pad for my PC before this makes any sense whatsoever for me. Flight sims were never meant to be played with a mouse. Though I do remember flying my F-19 over Libya with a keyboard. That was in 1990, though.
5) Cities XL Beta: Scratching that city building itch. Lots of content here, but it’s the type of city builder you really need to invest time in. And I haven’t had much time.
6) Rock Band 2: Have it, have barely touched it. Needs more Sondheim.
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Given our recent discussion on TMA about WW2, I was struck by Scott Sharkey’s attempt to count the number of videogames associated with each 20th century war.
His results aren’t really surprising. WW2 wins by a billion points.
I’m not precisely clear on what he is counting. He mentions mostly shooters but he’s talking console games, I assume, because he only finds one Korean War game and MASH doesn’t sound like a shooter. He’s clearly leaving out PC games since there have been flight sims and wargames that dealt with this war. Microprose’s 1984 Mig Alley for example. A game with the same name came out ten years ago.
So while his final conclusion is certainly valid – no one much cares to make Iraq or Korean War themed games when WW2 is out there – I think that a little more clarity about where he’s getting his stats and what (besides Snoopy v the Red Baron) doesn’t count would be nice.
Note that the theories he puts forward about why the Second World War is so popular are very different from the ones that Tom, Julian and I advanced. Sharkey suggests that the clarity of the enemy, the certainty of action and the fact people hate Nazis. These are all factors you want to think about when you want to personalize the game play – make the player the soldier and not the general.
So the fact that you get big tank battles and that you are on the cutting edge of a thousand technological revolutions and that almost the entire globe gets involved and that you have to mobilize an entire nation…all those things that are big deals for strategy gamers like me are mostly irrelevant once you think about the war in the terms of pretending you are carrying a gun.
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Chris Pereira is reporting that EA is looking at the possibility of reviving some of the classic Bullfrog titles from my halcyon days.
“For me, I love the old Bullfrog IP, it got me really passionately into games, and I’m really proud that Bullfrog is part of the heritage of Bright Light,” [Harvey] Elliot said. “I’m personally a huge fan of Populous and Theme Park, they were some of my favorite games — many years ago, obviously — and I’d love to see both of those remade.”
Mr. Elliot is affiliated with EA Bright Light, the house behind some of the Harry Potter games, including all of the movie tie-in games. Are they the best people to work on a new Populous?
Of course, it depends on what a remake would look like. I’d love to see the classic game interface and design with simply a visual upgrade and some UI tweaks. If they move it too far towards a traditional RTS with more player control, then the design will completely miss the point.
This is why, against my better judgment, I’m actually interested in how Majesty 2 will be received this fall. Like Populous, it’s a game that gives you lots of power but little control. As I said in my Crispy Minute yesterday, I think that certain topics should be revived in the American game design world, but that’s not the same as saying that certain design paths still work. Is there still an audience for indirect influence outside the city builder world?
But where you could understand Majesty 2 simply moving to a traditional RTS model and losing a little soul but not its point (fantasy world real time game), a remade Populous cannot maintain the Old Testament God conceit if you can shuffle your follower around or micromanage their upgrades.
Of course, I’m hoping this remake happens but I’m a little selfish.
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