East India Company and other trading themed games take center stage this week. Listen as a full panel talks about where Nitro’s sailing business sim stands and falls. Is it possible to make cargo interesting? Are trading games pointless with a computer opponent?
Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.
Tom’s final Fidgit diary on East India Company
My Crispy Gamer review
→ 14 CommentsTags:
I picked up this game a couple of weeks ago but have only really begun to get into it. It’s your run of the mill Battle of the Bulge game, with a nice range of small and mid sized scenarios leading up to the big German push.
I really don’t know where to even start with talking about it. It looks unlike any other real time wargame I’ve played. The maps and units look good, but everything is kind of a brownish green, making it hard to really know what is what sometimes. That’s why you get those big hovering icon units, I suppose, but if you’re going to use those why bother with giving me little men I can barely see? The air and artillery interfaces are very clear and easy to use, but you can’t drag select groups of tanks or infantry – a major oversight. When you zoom out on the bigger maps, it is nearly impossible to figure out what is going on where.
The biggest problems come from the AI. Take unit movement. The troops always want to take the quickest route to their destination, which makes sense right until you notice that the Wehrmacht is perfectly happy to stay in a nice column on the road while you set up your tanks and guns in a line and hit them as they come into range. The AI in general is pretty weak, forgetting its goals so it can focus on a minor distraction behind their lines. There’s not much sense of priority or dividing forces to take care of different problems. I like it when it clumps the infantry for my big artillery to hit.
But there is something about the game that I like. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It could be the old turtler in me. The scenarios are German offensives, so as the Yanks I can try to stem the tide of Nazis surging into France. The Bulge scenario is almost unmanageable, but the early minutes of that map make me panic like few other wargames do. Part of it is the confusion, but another part is not knowing which gap I should plug when or if I’d be better off retreating and retrenching. When the weather doesn’t cooperate and your air superiority means nothing, General Commander shows why the Battle of the Bulge is endlessly modelled by game designers – it’s a last angry thrust by a spent army, but even that can be terrifying.
I’d like to try it multiplayer and see if that redeems the game a little more.
Comments Off on World War II General Commander: Early MomentsTags:
Considering that one of my major complaints about EIC was the constant dropping into port mode, it’s typical that they would fix that in the first patch.
But seriously, guys, this is the kind of thing that should have been caught in play testing and that Beta testers (if they weren’t consumed by group think) would have mentioned. Points for fixing it on day one, but no credit for not fixing it in June.
→ 4 CommentsTags:
I have to stop letting myself get excited by preview builds and slick presentations by Finnish charmers.
East India Company demos very well. The core gameplay of sailing to the Indies and making a fortune is solid both in principle and execution. And when someone dangles the idea of bigger ships and naval wars in front of you, how can a history nut like me not get enthused?
So it’s a real shame the whole thing doesn’t really hold together after a couple of hours of play. Read the review at Crispy Gamer.
In some ways, it’s a little like Dawn of Discovery in that you will be doing the same thing over and over again. But where DoD gives you very good tools to manage your trading empire (if not well documented), EIC gives you very few of the basic things a trading game needs. Waypoints, variable cargo loads, minimum stores, automatic warehousing options…
The game still looks great. I would do a map entry on it if it had come out last year. The map art and style are emblematic of the idea that a game map should immediately communicate what the game is about. The ports are exaggerated in size and most of the map is empty of anything besides forests and the occasional building. After all, who cares about Rome if they aren’t selling anything I want?
But the aesthetics are so clean that it is easy to imagine a more efficient display of information. There is lots of room on screen for a unit price for a major trade good beside the port of call. Why not put a number above each European home port that reflects relative strength? It’s not that this information is hard to find, but it’s such important information – in some cases the only information you need – that there is no reason not to stick it up front.
Add in how limited the interface is and how dreary the naval battles are (Seriously – can anyone make the age of sail fun?) and you have a game that is good for what it is but what it is is not enough.
→ 10 CommentsTags:
Sometimes a last minute topic change actually goes somewhere. Troy, Tom and Bruce have a long and detailed conversation about the challenges wargame and strategy game designers face when they try to capture the essence of an historical moment. How do you model insurgency? What makes WW2 the default combat model if not the default topic? Why are Tom and Bruce still scarred by Combat Mission Shock Force? Also a discussion of reading material, how Twilight Struggle works, and whether Balance of Power is a terrible game.
Troy also manages to confuse two Middle East themed games. (Here’s the one Tom was talking about, here the one Troy was thinking of.)
Then a long update on Dominions 3 and why Bruce is afraid.
Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.
Norm Koger’s current project
The new version of Dragoon
Battlefront
GDW’s Assault
Tom’s Call of Duty 4 review
→ 10 CommentsTags:
Comments Off on Dawn of Discovery ReviewTags: