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Crispy Minute on East India Company

August 12th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Crispy Gamer, Paradox, Review

I had no idea I was rocking like that. Wow. I look kind of crazy.

I’ve said before how much I love what Crispy is doing with most of its short videos, and this was a lot of fun to shoot. There’s about 20 minutes on the cutting room floor, because the cameraman, John Teti, just asks questions and the presenter answers them. John, thankfully, had reviewed East India Company for The Onion AVClub, so he knew the game well enough to ask really good questions.

I really want to do another one, and hope that CG can do one of these every week.

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Civ Rev on iPhone

August 11th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Firaxis, Interview

I guess it makes sense to port a relatively simple TBS like Civilization Revolution to the iPhone. If you want the full skinny, Chris Remo has a conversation with the game’s producer, Jason Bergman, over at Gamasutra.

This is such an insane project because we’re putting out so much gameplay to a platform where we’re being constantly told, “You don’t need this much gameplay.” It’s really exciting, and it’s really weird. We’ll just have to see how it goes. It’s a really dynamic platform, and you can just make changes.

Maybe Julian Murdoch is right – I need to get an iPod touch.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 25 – World War II

August 11th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead, WW2

ThreeMovesAhead

Troy, Tom and Julian start with Hearts of Iron 3, detour through a bunch of other WW2 games and somehow end up making less sense than usual. Learn why Thin Red Line is Tom’s favorite WW2 movie, why Julian thinks everyone who bailed on Axis & Allies in college should give it another chance, why our Dominions 3 game has stalled and what Troy sounds like after a long train trip and a couple of pints.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Troy’s Hearts of Iron 3 review
Tom’s single post on HoI 3 so far
Scott Jennings’ early thoughts on the game
Time of Wrath
Making History
Commander: Europe at War
War Plan Pacific

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1998 Age of Empires Post Mortem

August 11th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, Ensemble

Game, Set, Watch is one of my favorite blogs and this old post mortem is another reason why.

We played our own game. While this may sound simple, it’s very important. Throughout the development process, every person in the company not only play tested, but played AoE with the purpose of having fun. As a result, we were very in tune with why the game was fun, and what people were likely to get out of it. We had 20 guys who were determined not to let the game play be compromised or watered down.

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Meet the Demon Assassin

August 10th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Gas Powered Games, Preview

Stardock has posted some of the details on the new demigod in Demigod.

I really need to play this again.

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Hearts of Iron 3 review

August 10th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Crispy Gamer, Paradox, Review, WW2

I was out of town for a long weekend. Caught a show in NY, met up with some of my Crispy Gamer colleagues, shot a video with them, etc.

In the meantime, Crispy Gamer published my review of Hearts of Iron 3, which I love.

There are problems with the game. There is some slowness when the map gets crowded, but it is not buzzkilling slowness like the load screens in East India Company. The map has some unfortunate geographic errors and the first patch introduced a bug in the consumer good production equation, which did nothing to lessen my enjoyment of the game – I noticed that the goods calculation had changed but I wasn’t quite sure whether the new one was right or wrong. Math.

Remember that a recommendation to buy a game is not the same as saying it is flawless.

But Hearts of Iron 3 is an excellent game and a big leap forward for a series that I have not really enjoyed. The HoI games have usually been at the bottom of my list of “most anticipated” Paradox games because they are so focused on the warfighting. The game is about the war, and if you don’t want to play the war you shouldn’t play the game.

We talk more about the game on this week’s podcast.

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