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31 Dec 04/1 Jan 05
I just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. I also wanted to thank everyone for supporting the site. For once, I'm not harping on the ads or links or anything. I just mean thank you for coming here, reading the site, the news, the stories and everything. I'd especially like to thank everyone who has contributed via comments or through the forum. I think we're probably up to over a good week's reading if you went through and wanted to read everything on the site.
Of course, in my secret dreams, we'd be the biggest thing since sliced bread, but I'll take what we have. If you have a free moment you might want to drop our URL into any strategy/tactical gaming forums you happen to visit. Regardless, you all gave me enough encouragement to keep the place going through the whole remainder of 2004. I'll take it.
2005 looks pretty promising on a variety of fronts. We should see Sony's PSP and accompanying games. Nintendo's DS is promising some blockbuster announcements to coincide with that launch. Microsoft is still purportedly on track to release the Xbox 2 next year. Then we have some interesting tactical titles like FEAR and STALKER coming. There are also some interesting strategy titles on the horizon though 2004 will be a tough year to top.
So everyone, thanks again, happy new year. Let's make the most of 2005.
Jason
Comments?
30 Dec 04
Gamespot is winding down its best and worst of 2004. I'm going to talk about some of them today, so if you don't want anything ruined for you, go read the whole section they put up. It's right Here. Then you can come back here and not worry that I've ruined anything for you. Hey! I saw you peeking down at the next paragraph. It's your own funeral. Don't come crying to me later. You were warned.
I'd have to say that 2004 was a good year for strategy and tactical gaming. I'm pretty behind in my game time myself, so I don't know if I'll do any annual awards. I might just steal from Bill again and do some positive and negative trends. Until then, if it happens, I'll just comment on what other places are doing with their game of the year awards. In case you can't guess, we're starting with Gamespot.
Alright, the obvious place to start is the strategy awards. As you can see Here, there were some great candidates. They have mostly PC games, Warhammer 40k, Rome: Total War, Silent Storm, and Sid Meier's Pirates. One console game snuck in, Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders. Clearly the last two are the only ones that could be considered surprises. It was a strong year. I've played a bit of The Crusaders and must say it's quite impressive if you can ignore the poor voice acting and don't mind the fact you're often in the middle of the action fighting for your life. I've heard some places, including Sears, are already clearancing The Crusaders out. It's worth your time to check it out.
So who won? Well, to me it seemed pretty obvious. It was Rome: Total War. It was bigger, prettier and better than the previous games. Some fans complained that the new AI for Rome didn't stack up to the heavily tweaked AI from Medieval, but if the Creative Assembly supports Rome as well, that won't be a problem. Even with some AI flaws, Rome is a stunning achievement. In fact, I like Gamespot's word, Epic. The game was epic. Minor flaws couldn't bring it down.
I just wanted to go over one more category. It's the "Best Game No One Played" category. I'm going straight to the winner the time. It's Silent Storm. I suppose you could argue that many niche games fall into this category, but the point is that most gamers outside of any niche can enjoy Silent Storm. As I mentioned before, this game did more to capture the spirit of Xcom than anything else. It doesn't have the base building, but it does have the addictive combat. Perhaps the most addictive thing is using your massive destruction to your advantage by clearing lines of sight for your snipers and heavy gunners. I guess the real title of the category should be the best game that everyone should play, but didn't. Silent Storm is worth picking up.
Jason
Comments?
29 Dec 04
I'm thinking we're going to need some sort of recruiting drive. That's sort of been my mantra. If we just get enough regulars here, the community will be self sustaining. Then if everyone occasionally sets up a game and writes a story, we'll have a steady stream. With new items to talk about, it can become a habit for everyone to stop by the site regularly and it builds from there. Obviously we're not quite there yet. So if anyone has any suggestions, I quite open.
There was an interesting article on N-Sider about Nintendo's current and future strategy. I think I found it from Slashdot. It describes the big N as being in a death spiral, but points the obvious way out. The point is that you can't always cater to your base and not take risks. The author also points out that the only risks they will take are hedged by licensed characters. Here's the article. I'd be interested in what everyone thinks.
I'll just give a quick recap on my feelings on the current console generation. Sony started out expecting limited competition. (Ok so the Dreamcast technically started us out, but it died so quickly, largely by suicide, that it's hard to count despite some classic games) Sony created a platform to last. They intentionally made it difficult to program so there'd be steady improvement of performance and quality over it's lifetime. The big problem they didn't see was the trend towards multiplatform development. That limits the tuning bells and whistles for each platform, so few developers spent the research dollars trying to pull the best performance from the PS2 hardware. This could have been offset by Sony if they had released some high performance middleware, but they were moving on.
Nintendo had a very straight forward strategy. They would make a game console with more power than the PS2. They'd make it easy to program for and easy to use. They'd use a proprietary format to limit piracy. They'd update their classic franchises. Then they'd leverage their huge handheld market to win back market share through linking up. Their problem was they didn't see their strategy was flawed when Microsoft entered the game. The Xbox beat them on power and ease of programming. Their proprietary format limited game size which hurt them on many multiplatform titles. Their updates didn't draw in many new fans. The linking idea largely went nowhere because it was often expensive, inconvenient and didn't add much. They also reacted a little late to Microsoft's bid for developers.
Microsoft did amazingly well by doing what they do best. They were willing to lose money to buy market share. Only by failing to knock out (or knock down Nintendo) did they fail in this round. They easily beat the market when it came to power, online capabilities and ease of programming. From day one they aggressively went after developers to support their platform. Their purchase of Bungie was the power play of this generation. They have a few problems for the next generation, but for this one they did quite well. After the Bungie move, I'd say their best play was creating the impression that the Xbox was the hip, adult console to have. Pretty impressive for a company people love to hate. They did have some hardware reliability problems, but nothing worse than Sony. There were also some gaps in their library, but again that can be overcome in the next generation.
Of course, that probably sounds like a ringing endorsement for the Xbox, but if I had to pick a favorite for this generation, I'd go with the PS2. Sorry, I'm a sucker for strategy RPG's. There's a ton on the PS2 and what one on the Xbox? If I had to pick a game as the best of this console generation, I'd probably go with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. That doesn't include any games since October (for obvious reasons). I'm still predicting price drops across the board for the consoles soon (spring at the latest). So even if you missed out, there's still time for some quality gaming.
Jason
Comments?
28 Dec 04
Hello. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but if anyone sees me make a mistake, please let me know about it. I try not to make too many, but with lack of sleep, I'm sure I'm making more. I had mentioned that put up some new SWAT 4 screenshots in the images sections of news.talkstrategy.com. What I didn't realize was that I had left them as admin only. I could see them, but you couldn't. So if you see me doing something like that, please let me know.
I played a little more Red Dead Revolver (PS2 & Xbox) with my Dad while he was visiting. I wouldn't say it's a great game, but if you love Westerns, you can really get into it. It's multiplayer mode is also kind of interesting. It's a basic deathmatch, but each time you defeat an opponent, they drop a card. The card could be a power up, health or it could be a playing card. You try to collect playing cards to create a winning hand. Since the game is scored by money earned, you can actually lose on kills, but win the match with good card playing. It's a fun idea, too bad there's no online mode.
This week's game is another strange one. It's Creature Conflict: The Clan Wars (official site) from Mithis Entertainment. It's sort of like Worms 3D in space. You try to lead one of four clans in chaotic turn based combat. But then you can take over one (or sometimes more) of your units for realtime action based combat. It sports a kind of cell shaded look. They're trying to go heavy on the humor as well. Creature Conflict will be out for the PC, Xbox and PS2 in the first quarter of 2005.
Jason
Comments?
27 Dec 04
Busy day and I'm still behind and short on sleep. I'll try to catch up here tomorrow. I have just a couple of quick notes for you before I hit the hay. I try not to cover the same ground as other sites if I can't add anything. With that in mind, may I recommend Bill Harris' summary of the Take Two strategy on his blog. He's done a great summary. Check it out Here.
Finally, I mentioned that my hosting provider was somehow on a spammer friendly list in some parts of Europe. That means I can't use my talkstrategy.com accounts to email people there. Thanks to disarm, I was able to get a gmail account. If I can't respond to your emails because of the blacklist, I'll send replies from talkstrategy@gmail.com. Since the blacklist doesn't stop you from sending email to me, please continue to use my email below for site related correspondence. More tomorrow.
Jason
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