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30 Dec 05
I've got a ton of stuff for you today. Oh, who am I kidding? There's nothing going on in the gaming industry right now outside of major players counting their money. No one's interested in another 360 rant, so I'll wish everyone a happy new year and see you back in 2006. Don't forget to get your game of the year nominations in.
If you need something to do this weekend (besides writing up a story of a recent gaming experience, or playing the freeware games mentioned yesterday), you might want to check out Eurogamer. They're running down their top 50 games of the year. It's a surprisingly interesting read compared to your average top games run down.
Jason
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29 Dec 05
It's been a quiet week for gaming news. Readership is down as I expect all of you are getting some quality gaming in. I think I should get back to that myself. Thanks to Kotaku for pointing out gHacks top five freeware games. That should help those of you that didn't get any good games as presents.
Rather than boring you with any meaningless drivel that might keep me from playing one more turn of Civ IV, I'll just get to the game of the week. It's ALFA Antiterror (official site) from Mist Land. As I mentioned in the demo review (though apparently that huge demo was unofficial, the new one is much smaller, but should still give you a feel for the game), it's a turned based tactical game similar to Silent Storm in a more modern and realistic setting. Speaking of realistic, this may be the first game that models the huge range capabilities of current firearms. That, in turn leads to some spectacular shots. There a career mode set in a historic campaign that offer opportunities for skill advancement. It's small unit tactics that plays out in a 'we go' manner. Look for ALFA soon and grab one of the demos right now.
Jason
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28 Dec 05
I'm sorry. I don't have much for you today. I didn't have much time during the day today partially because I couldn't resist working on fixing some of the network problems. Tonight I might have had time, but I couldn't resist the siren call of the final game of the season for my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. Admittedly, it was a poorly officiated game, but the wild ending was worth it. Somehow, despite all odds, Nebraska pulled it out. The bowl system may have its problems, but it does produce more winners than any playoff system could.
Let me reboot and get back on track tomorrow.
Jason
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27 Dec 05
Well, my WET11 wireless bridge died. I guess I won't be doing any online console gaming until I replace it with something. I see that Linksys is offering a rebate on their wireless gaming adapter. Perhaps I'll try that. Someone suggested that whatever I get, I should replace the antenna with a high gain version. I should be able to check signal strength and determine if that's necessary. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Don't forget to stop by the news section and vote in the new poll. I'm curious as to what people might be looking forward to. Also don't forget to send me nominations for game of the year. Let me know someone is alive out there.
Groovalicious Games has their review of Civilization 4 up. Eric takes a pretty good look at the latest edition. I've just started tinkering with the game, but I pretty much agree with him. By the way, there's a new patch out that can be downloaded from 2K Games.
While at Groovalicious, I noted their news item that Down in Flames had just released a bonus pack. It adds a couple of campaigns, new animations, play tweaks and a new plane. One of these days I'm going to break down and buy that game.
Jason
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26 Dec 05
I hope everyone who celebrated it had a very merry Christmas. It was a good holiday for us. David's not to the point where he understood either the church or the presents, but he loved all the attention. It looks like I'll have more good gaming to finish out the year.
Does anyone remember Carnage Heart? It was an old PS1 game from Artdink. It was a kind of attempt at a 4X game. It was limited, but it had one unique feature. Your army was built up of robots, but you wrote the AI that governed them. You kept buying better weapons, parts and types of robots. You could use the standard AI, but that made the game pretty worthless. The very geeky fun was in programming your robots and watching them fight and win.
There was a certain tension in combat since it was completely hands off. You could have the better robot and lose if your programming wasn't up to snuff. There was a certain abstraction to the programming. You placed tiles in a logic grid. The program would start from the same place (I think it was the upper left) and proceed through the commands to the end or bottom when it would start over. It was possible to lock a robot in a loop if you weren't careful.
One of the robot parts you could upgrade was the CPU. A better CPU ran faster and had a larger grid that allowed for more complex programs. With practice, you could create some pretty diabolical programs. The down side was the huge time investment in the programming and debugging for short combat payoffs.
I was wondering what a modern version of that might look like? I guess Phantom Crash did a little of that. They used animal analogues to describe mechs' personalities, but you were still in control of the fight. To make it fun to many people, you'd have to abstract the programming process even further. You need something that is functionally working each time, but that tweakers can play with for long periods of time to get most out their robots.
I don't have a good answer. Perhaps some sort of play calling interface would work. You train your AI in simulations by selecting from a play list of moves your robot can pull off. The AI notes your trends in a variety of situations and performs those actions when it encounters similar situations in combat. It would be something of a combination of AI training from Virtua Fighter 4 and the VIP system from the 2K sports games. It would be interesting to see what someone could do with that game today. I'm not holding my breath though.
Jason
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23 Dec 05
Dear Gaming Friends,
It's hard believe another year has flown by. At first blush, it hardly seems like I got any gaming in this year. Looking a little deeper, I realize that I did all right. The problem was my limited gaming time. I usually was only able to play in short bursts. That meant that my gaming plate ended up a little light on the strategy, and I hardly completed any games this year.
I started the year playing some of my Christmas presents. Mainly it was Halo 2 and Battle for Middle Earth. Both were fun, but neither reached the levels of greatness I was hoping for. Fortunately, the year had a strong gaming start. Out of nowhere came Mercenaries from Lucasarts. It was a shockingly great blend of third person action in an open warfare, sandbox zone.
The Xbox continued to get love with the purchase of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Who would think to get a good western game, you'd have to go to Oddworld and play as a half lion, half Clint Eastwood? Since I still haven't gotten around to picking up Resident Evil 4, the Gamecube came to life with Baten Kaitos. A strategy RPG with card based battles, you know I was there. After that, the cube gave me some spy time in James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing.
The PC is still my gaming home, but it was relegated to writing and Half Life 2 at the beginning of the year. Then all of a sudden we had Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, Darwinia and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Tactical RPG Superheroes, Virtual Life battles and tactical space combat were so much fun that it took me an extra couple of months to finish Kohan II. Still if I had to recommend one game out of those, it would be Kohan II.
Then it was time to get back to the Xbox. I was just starting Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (and being intimidated by the online pros) when out of the blue comes Phantom Dust. Sure it's an action game to an extent, but you enter battles with powers randomly selected from decks of power cards you select. It's strategy, action, fun and online wrapped into a budget priced package.
Around this time I strayed in my loyalty to my favorite genres. I put some quality time into Paper Mario: The Thousand Year door, a fun, Gamecube RPG. Then I played some God of War. Not only was it so good I had to finish it, but I even finished the challenge of the gods. That was an amazingly polished action game marred only slightly by a few poor platforming sections.
Redemption was close at hand as SWAT 4 arrived into my clutches. They had me at macing belligerent civilians. SWAT 4 is the new standard for tactical shooters.
After that, the summer wasn't bad. I was pleasantly surprised with Act of War: Direct Action in the modern military RTS genre. Battlefield 2 sucked my life away for a while throwing me first person into modern combat. Too bad I suck. Then I played a little catch up with Sid Meier's Pirates! I had virtual years of fun plundering on the high seas. I tried to play the Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 expansion and Evil Genius, but neither game could run stably on my system.
Then, on Bill's recommendation, I grabbed Space Rangers 2: Dominators. It's an amazing living universe with so many included types of gameplay, it's hard to keep track of them all. I didn't instantly name it my game of the year, but I did have fun.
I played a bunch of Burnout 3 in preparation for the launch of Burnout Revenge. There was much highway carnage, but before long my interest burned out. Still, both are great fun to pick up and play.
Then, talk about your different types of battles. Battalion Wars on the Gamecube thrust me into a cartoon world of global combat. The Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War expansion managed to up the gore and violence while keeping up the fast paced gameplay.
I started winding up the year with a little destruction. I smashed my way through cities and armies at the Hulk in Ultimate Destruction. Then I took to felling hulks as the mortal sized warrior in Shadow of the Colossus. Both games were chocked full of fun. Colossus clearly takes the prize as it evokes one memorable moment after another.
Finishing up the year, I indulged in some Star Wars Battlefront 2 on the PC. It's fun taking out some droids or troopers now and then. I also think I've mentioned my dips back into the scenic universe of Homeworld 2.
So despite having limited gaming time this year, I have to say I think things turned out pretty well. Here's hoping you had a good gaming time this year, an even better time next year, and that you enjoy the holiday season. Don't drink and drive. Cheers.
In case you weren't interested in that, I'm sure there are other things going on.
Jason
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