Welcome to the Home of Game Strategies and Stories
7 Oct 05
I'm still working on a lot of the background stuff on the site. Fortunately, if you don't notice anything, that means I'm doing a good job. I have a few themes and things I need to work on. I'll make announcement if I get something working that I like. Thoughts and suggestions are appreciated. Complaints are accepted and considered.
I wanted to talk briefly about Black and White 2. It's a sequel from a designer who doesn't do sequels. My gut instinct on this one was that it would get creamed in the reviews. After all, a lot of publications had a lot of egg on their face after the first Black and White review. To be fair, the original was a stunning game for the first few hours. The problem was that that was the high point of the game. After that, you were dealing more and more with the flaws of the game.
I hate to say it, but seemed to me that there was a design flaw with Black and White. It started with the awakening of a god. Naturally, you started small and learned to gain your powers. Then you found your creature and had a constant presence in the world. You help villagers, trained your creature and grew in power. The flaw was that as you grew in power, you were never freed from the tedium that you used to build your power.
Ideally, your creature would have become a powerful independent force in the world carrying out your will. Your cities would have largely run themselves leaving you free to focus on the big picture of converting people through persuasion or might. But Black and White never got there. You still were shuffling around wood and buildings. People were complaining about not having food even though there was plenty because there was no good way to ensure enough of your peons carried food to those who needed it. Getting caught up in this tedium left you feeling not very mighty indeed.
To me the way to fix the game for sequel would be to eliminate the tedium (especially as your influence grows) and make your creature more useful and intelligent. So when both the positive reviews (IGN) and the negative (Eurogamer) tell me of the great tedium and the general lack of feelings of power (mayor? city planner?), I realize it is the sequel to Black and White, but it's not for me. Of course, I guess that's what you should expect when the go in with the stated goal of making the game more for non gamers. Despite my lack of playing time, I still don't fall into that category. Perhaps some day I'll find it in the bargain bin. I'm officially moving my hopes on to The Movies (but still waiting for reviews).
Jason
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6 Oct 05
Ok, things aren't quite back to normal, but everything seems to be working again. Please contact me if you experience any problems. You can play around with the new themes in the news section. I'll get around to customizing them all at some point. We should have less compatibility problems now.
There's something I need you to understand. David is crawling now. He also has no danger sense or sense of self preservation. He's curious and explores everything. So what does that mean. That means I spend most of my waking hours chasing him around trying to keep him from killing himself. This has meant a sharp drop off in gaming (and sleep) time. I apologize if anything around here is not up to the usual standards. It's a rough time. Thanks for the understanding.
It seems Full Auto for the Xbox 360 has been pushed back until next year. I'm wondering if my purchase has also been pushed back. I'm tempted because the system is a shiny new bauble, but I'm not sure if there will be much I want to play on it before Christmas. Sure there's Oblivion. I could probably play that until the games I'm interested in come out.
The biggest problem is that there are more games coming out for the current gen consoles that I'm interested in than have even seemingly been announced for the next generation. I mean for the PS3 are there even 10 titles announced that aren't being ported (up?) from the current generation? There have been no games announced for the Revolution. Microsoft claims some 200 games are in development for the 360, but there are what 40 or 50 announced? Half of those will be current gen as well? I'm tempted to wait until the $60 game price era ends to jump into the next gen. My only worry is that if I don't get a 360 before a PS3, I might not give it a fair shake. I'm still hoping for massive differentiation in the next generation even if trends point the other way. Nintendo is certainly trying to help.
Jason
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5 Oct 05
What a headache. Please excuse the mess over in the news section. I'll try to finish cleaning it up tomorrow. I upgraded postnuke for some new features, security and compatibility. In the end, I'm sure I'll say it was worth it, but the stress and the problems (though minor) make me think I won't be doing this again for a long time. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Jason
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4 Oct 05
Amazing. I put up my request for help on one of the least read days in the past few months. Sigh. Oh well. Check it out if you didn't already.
X05 has started. This is Microsoft's (last?) big European gaming show before the 360 launches. They're showing off most of the games that will be available in the "launch window." As you might expect, it's sports and action heavy. There are a couple of games that might fall in the tactical category, but I don't think I've seen any that would qualify as strategy games.
Therefore, I'm going to rank the Xbox 360 as a long term buy, but not a must have for the holiday season. That's not to say I won't break down and get one. Of course, if Microsoft breaks down and sends me a review unit, after posting a brief report on the netherworld freezing over, I'll gladly list all the console's strengths. I think there's a huge amount of potential in the next generation consoles, but right now PC's still rule, current generation is lead by the PS2, then strangely followed by the GBA, then the Xbox and the Gamecube. With so many quality (hopefully) PC titles coming out, that's the logical place to invest your money.
Once all three consoles are out and the post launch games are announced, we should have a better idea when the best time to buy a next gen unit. Pricing pressures should also bring game prices back to current levels and perhaps launch the first round of price cuts. After the holidays, there's also the expected current generation price cuts with increasing numbers of reduced price and greatest hits games.
As an aside, I can understand why many strategy gamers are reluctant to jump into the console waters. There's still the kiddy perception out there. Strategy games get little to no coverage. Since they're often reviewed by reviewers who wouldn't categorize themselves as strategy gamers, nuance is lost and some scores suffer. Then, of course, there are the input limitations and the resolution limits of standard TV. It's easy to be negative, but I can tell you I've had some great strategy gaming experiences on consoles. Developers are often willing to take more chances and work hard to deliver fun rather than a rote feature set.
If you can't make up your mind, this week's game is going to be available on both the PC and the Xbox. It's Shattered Union (official site) from PopTop Software. Shattered Union is a turn based strategy game that's has a near future scenario where the United States breaks into warring factions. Then the European Union tries to come in and create some stability. PopTop promises a non linear campaign with fully animated combat at the end of each turn. The environments are fully destructible leaving battlefields looking like battlefields. Despite the obvious fact that Texas will always win, you have the option to play as any one of the six American factions or as the Europeans. Can you reunite America? Shattered Union should be available this month.
Jason
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3 Oct 05
Now that we've gone through three quarters of the year, I figure it's time to check on the status of the site. Most of the metrics are pretty good. Ad revenue, though still quite small, is growing. The page views and unique visitors keep going up. Obviously, I keep pumping out the columns and news stories so the amount of content keep growing.
The big negative is in user interaction. I must be neglecting something since it has dropped way off. Non contest story submissions have fallen off (Thanks for keeping it from dropping to zero, Torolf). Forum posts are down as well. My emails from readers have dropped too. Even the flame emails have dropped off.
I'm not saying this place was ever a hot bed of activity. But the vision is to be growing in that area and not worrying about the others. From day one, I stated I want this place to be a community. I wanted people to think of this place first when something new, emergent or cool happened in one of their games. If you had a question about an obscure strategy game, someone here would have an answer. I also expected a small, but steady flow of stories coming in.
It looked like things were going that way, but I must have changed something or people just gave up on this place as a community. Right now we're a small, sometimes interesting, strategy and tactical gaming news, information and opinion site. I'll take that, but I'd rather be the Home of Game Strategies and Stories. I accept responsibility for letting this place get off track.
I could use your help in getting it back on track. I need to know what might get people more involved again. I like the participation in contest, but I don't have the budget yet to keep them going nonstop (or even close). Besides you can never buy a community. So what should I do to get Talk Strategy back on track? Please send me your thoughts.
I figure right now we're not too far off. I don't want it to get to that point. That's why I'm asking for help now. So what would it take to get you more involved here? I am curious.
Jason
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