posts by golden jew
golden jew

Sins of an Innovative Developer

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Sins of a Solar Empire is such a complicated game that I felt compelled to write an accompanying editorial with my review. Because Ironclad has tried something new and fresh, there are more than a few kinks to work through. At least in the current infancy of the game, a big issue Ironclad is tackling is whether a developer caters to the larger gamer audience crowd–even if they’re wrong, or the people playing the game the “right” way.

For various reasons, the game is very difficult to learn to play properly. In no particular order, let me throw a few out there:

1. The single player AI is too easy, to the point you don’t need to utilize counter units, so you don’t learn much about units

2. There’s no campaign to make you learn to use different units in different situations to make up for the general AI being terrible

3. →  Read the rest

Review – Sins of a Solar Empire

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Real Time Strategy games have been somewhat dormant in the past few years. The big expectation, of course, is that Starcraft 2 will re-energize the genre and spawn another wave of imitators. The 4X genre, on the other hand, has been bolstered by Galactic Civilization 2 and is being “dumbed down” for the widely anticipated Civilization Revolutions, due out in June. Speaking of Civ, Beyond the Sword, while excellent, is horribly buggy and has been heavily neglected and unsupported by Firaxis. Seriously, Firaxis, you guys are sell-out assholes, and I will continue to call you out until you patch BTS properly instead of cashing in on Civ Rev.

In the meantime, to satiate your 4X and RTS desires all at once, we have Sins of a Solar Empire, the first of its kind: a 4X RTS. →  Read the rest

Review – Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings

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Like many gamers, I yearn for the mighty games of yore. In my case, I’ve been craving a strategy RPG. Tactics Advance, Shining Force on the GBA–I was hunting around for these games in hopes of something that would occupy my time and fill me full of tactical goodness during my daily commute.

Of course, this led me to ignore NEW games that I could be searching for. So it was by complete accident that I got a copy of Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings. I was about to travel, and needed a new DS game. I saw FF: RW, and decided “I’m a Square fanboy, and it’s an FF game… I should get it!”
Great, a chocobo. Square’s creativity truly knows no bounds.

Imagine my surprise when I found that FF: RW is a real time strategy RPG, and a good one at that. →  Read the rest

Review – Age of Empires: Age of Kings (and Crashing)

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I hate to lead with such a petty slam against Age of Empires on the DS, but the fact of the matter is, the game is crash-tastic. I experienced two irritating crashes during campaigns (if you watch animated battles, the game can crash. This is worked around by disabling animated battles, which you will eventually want to do anyway). Another crash came upon completing a particularly long scenario: the screen just went black and never loaded the victory page.
A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir to a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deni’st the least syllable of thy addition.
 →  Read the rest

EA: Level 10 alchemists, Level 1 Tech Support Part 2

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When we last left our heroes, they were encountering fucktardery of the highest order at EA while trying to get a replacement Rock Band guitar. After muddling his way through their horrible tech support, my roommate managed to talk to a real human being who was able to fix the problem. Days later, a new guitar showed up. Even better, there was no accountability attached to the guitar to indicate we needed to return the foot pedal they had mistakenly sent. Gleeful, we were in the process of trying to figure out how to scam EA. Our thought was that we might install the new foot pedal and attempt to return the old one for a SECOND new foot pedal. This would arm us with a spare in the event of a foot pedal malfunction. →  Read the rest

EA: Level 10 alchemists, Level 1 Tech Support

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So unfortunately, like many Rock Band players, our guitar broke about a month ago. No problem, we have Guitar Hero 3 backups, so we’ll send it off for repair. Additionally, rumor is that you get a free EA game, so sure, we’ll take free stuff. So my roommate packaged up the guitar in a box (opting to not pay for immediate gratification, which was an option), and sent it off. We waited a few weeks, nothing happened, although the repair status on the website changed, so we anticipated that some sort of witchcraft was occurring deep in the EA support labs.

And boy were we right, at least about the witchcraft. Yesterday, a small box shows up for my roommate. He wasn’t expecting any porn (or so he claimed), so he was mystified what it could be. →  Read the rest

Is this the beginning of the end? Looking back at the past two years

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Two years ago, I was a fairly one dimensional gamer. I enjoyed 4X games on the side, enjoyed PC FPS and RTS… but my heart and soul belonged to MMOs. From punching the wall when dying one too many times in Everquest as an emotional 17 year old, to dumping a girl over World of Warcraft at 24, I was dedicating–easily–30 hours a week to MMO games. Yikes. A second job. That didn’t pay.

Then I burned out. And suddenly, I had free time again. I filled it with other video games, of course, but also structured my personal life better. It was no longer a rush to get home, shovel food in and get raiding. I had thought that perhaps I had finally grown up. I was no longer showing up to work as late as possible to make up for another late night of WoW. →  Read the rest

Am I working or playing?

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This is a common favorite topic of mine, but goddamn is it relevant to my gaming life right now. Currently I am playing four games: Rock Band (with roommates and friends), Eve Online (as usual), Etrian Odyssey (when commuting), and DOTA (with real friends, as always).

Right now, Rock Band and Eve seem an awful lot like work. Rock Band I’m being forced to play practice mode to learn some of the harder song’s drum lines so that my virtual band might succeed (also, I’d like to get better at the drums). This experience has made me want to murder anyone who thinks that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are toys and not like real musical instruments. I feel like I’m taking drum lessons as I play the song at 50% to learn the muscle memory, then slowly speed it up to full. →  Read the rest

Shameless Propoganda (and some insight)

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This blog post is a bit off topic, but indulge me. I have the pleasure of being loosely associated with an upcoming independent film called “Look,” which is opening on Friday in a few cities (NYC and LA). The premise of Look is that there are 30 million surveillance cameras in America, which capture the average American 200 times a day. The movie is a fiction that covers several intertwining plotlines, with each scene shot from a hypothetical security camera: elevator cameras, convenience store cameras, even bathroom and changing room cameras.

What does this have to do with gaming? You’ll recall about a year ago there was a great deal of outcry when the Left Behind game praised Jesus too much. Actually, the Left Behind game had an embedded cookie tracker that would then deliver in-game advertisements tailored to your perverted (or not) needs. →  Read the rest

Review – Rock Band

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I spent the week of Thanksgiving on vacation, so I missed the debut of Rock Band. Thanks to .33 cents a minute shipboard internet, I was able to read Tony’s gleeful post about the scarcity of units available. Although I had reserved the game at Gamestop, bane of all video game stores, panic set in. Contacting my roommate, I asked him to see if he could procure my reserved copy from Gamestop, either through the kindness of the Gamestop employees (yeah right), or more likely, impersonating me.

Surprisingly, not only did my local Gamestop have enough copies, they also allowed my roommate to buy on my behalf (shout out to Sasha, the store manager of the White Flint Gamestop, for being 100x cooler than every other Gamestop manager. I hope corporate doesn’t find out and fire you). →  Read the rest

Music fans + stupidity + internet connection = Rock Band forums

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Certain topics you just avoid in conversation unless you want to get into an argument with someone. Religion is one–I mean, why would you believe in a zombie who will save you if you eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you love him? Politics is another: let’s not even go there. Music can be a bit safer–but against fanboys, it’s probably worse than the other two. Some of my favorite witticisms include the hipster mating call, which is “I listened to this band before they were mainstream!” I saw this shirt on threadless.com: “I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet.” At any rate, music discussions are bound to bring up vicious debates as to what bands are talented, which suck, etc etc.

Why is this pertinent to gaming? →  Read the rest

It’s the end of Civilization as we know it, and I feel fine (I think)

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There has been a recent hullabaloo about the pending Civilization Revolutions game. Having realized that the hardcore 4X PC gamer market is not as lucrative as say, every other platform, Firaxis has set about developing a new “made for console” version of Civilization.

Because a move like this smacks of “selling out” and “destroying the game concept,” and it coincides with what can only be described as criminal negligence of the Beyond the Sword expansion, the community has been at best, suspicious, and at worst, behaving like forum trolls at a n00b feeding frenzy. And they have every right to have this attitude.

For starters, Firaxis is cultivating as much ill will as humanly possible with the Beyond the Sword expansion. The launch version (like all PC games these days) was bug ridden, requiring a patch. →  Read the rest

Deadly fists of deadly fury – melee imbalances in FPS

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Because I desperately crave acceptance and attention from the “cool kids,” I’ve recently found myself playing immense amounts of Halo 3 with my roommate and various Xbox Live people.

A quick aside about my gaming habits (which you don’t care about but are vital to this post). I have never been a console FPS gamer. I’ve always been a PC gamer. UT2k and UT2003 were my bread and butter – annihilate people with a twitch of a mouse and a blast of the flak cannon. From there I moved on to Call of Duty, which was “slower” because of the WW2 genre, but still immensely fun.

Controllers for FPS have always been my kryptonite. As a result, I sort of fell off the FPS gaming bandwagon. I did recently get into Gears of War for a bit, but it wasn’t nearly as entertaining as Halo 3 has been. →  Read the rest

Best Buy Hero

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After recovering from a brutal hangover Sunday morning, I set out with my roommate obtain Guitar Hero 3. Now, due to past horrific experienced with Best Buy, I had first sought to order it from Amazon.com, but was told I would not receive said game until mid November. This was deemed unacceptable. So we headed to Best Buy.

Upon arriving, we found, to our glee, a fully stocked display of Guitar Hero 3 games. I quickly grabbed two copies for the Xbox 360 (one for me, one as a gift for a friend), and my roommate grabbed an extra guitar. As I walked away from the display, I was accosted by a Best Buy employee, who, seeing two of us, informed me that there was a one-per-customer limit. I handed my extra copy to my roommate and the employee was sated. →  Read the rest

Review – Magical Starsign

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Gummy frogs! Gummy worms! Pirate Otters! Saving Miss Madeline, our beloved teacher! The Book of the Darned!

The only thing missing from this game is puppy dogs and rainbows, and since I haven’t beaten it yet, I’m assuming there is a puppy dog and rainbow planet. Welcome to Magical Starsign, an RPG for the Nintendo DS made by developer Brownie Brown. Reading Tyson’s recent Heroes of Mana review, he mentioned Brownie Brown is a renegade group that broke off from Square. My guess is that Square rounded up all the people who they thought should be teaching preschool instead of making video games and fired them, but I digress.

The setting for Magical Starsign is the Will o’ Wisp Academy, where a group of students overhear their headmaster talking to their favorite teacher. →  Read the rest

Review – Civilization IV Beyond the Sword

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One of my biggest critiques of the Civilization Warlords Expansion was that I felt Firaxis had produced just enough content to make the game worth buying, and not a smidgen more. Being a Civilization fanatic, I had no choice to buy it, but my hope was that the next expansion, when it came out, would be more satisfying. In the months coming up to the release of Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword, I began to get giddy as a schoolgirl (I even found myself shopping for plaid skirts) that this expansion would deliver. I was not disappointed. And my new skirt fits really well.

I’ll breeze over the stuff you’ve already read elsewhere (or seen in the game): new leaders, new civilizations. There are more of them, an they are in fact delicious. →  Read the rest

Quick Rant on Software

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Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword is out. Unfortunately, I’m traveling and was unable to get it yet. But a quick swing by Civfanatics shows that there of course has already been an initial patch to the game, because the shipped version was buggy and terrible.

I know Firaxis is not the first (or last) developer to do this. I know that it’s a common practice. But it pisses me off that the internet age has led to such a terrible degradation in the quality of PC game QA. On the one hand, it is great that software developers can add content through patching. It’s nice that they can fix bugs that sneak through. But shipping what’s basically unplayable crap, knowing full well you can, and will patch it, is sloppy and inexcusable. →  Read the rest

Fillet Mignon with a side of Pork Rinds: Awesome games and their stupid minigames

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The average gamer supposedly plays 7.8 hours a week. That’s an ESA study so I think they rounded down to make gamers seem less crazy. Other studies show more like 20-30 hours a week, which makes more sense to me. For us hardcore gamers, I’m sure the number would be even higher.

So while we waste our life away playing video games, it has become painfully apparent to me that, like most products in our corner cutting capitalist society, video games have a lot of filler. A video game, especially an RPG or MMO, is graded on how much of your time it takes to beat. In most cases, a game with short playtime is over quickly and generally unsatisfying (much like sex with me). Longer games are considered better. One of the first questions people ask about a new RPG is “how long is it?” →  Read the rest

Beyond the news – Civ 4 expansion musings

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It’s not news at this point, but Civilization, Beyond the Sword has been announced and is due to hit shelves in July. And goddamn does this expansion look good.

It seems that despite a short development timeline, Firaxis is adding substantially more content than came with Civilization: Warlords. Warlords was a great expansion, don’t get me wrong, but it seemed that they were more focused on the minimal amount new content possible (yet every upgrade was so good you couldn’t not buy the game).

Beyond the Sword is going to add new buildings, new civilizations, new wonders, new units, new technologies, and even a whole new espionage system. Not a bad haul by any stretch. The new espionage system will allow spying to become a civilization wide effort, so expect new levels of cruelty in multiplayer games. →  Read the rest

MMOs: Grinding away my patience

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Lately, I have been playing Eve Online. For those of you who don’t follow my every move on this website (and for those two of you who do, you’re awesome!), Eve Online is a space based MMO. Unlike other games, the skill training system is based on real-time training, which continues when off-line. Therefore actions in the game: killing spaceships, trading, etc, do not yield experience. So while I have been only tepidly interested in the game, and not playing, my character has been training, basically at the same rate as an active player.

As a result of having a nearly six month old character, I can fly all sorts of awesome ships, which makes the game fun. However, because I haven’t been playing–just training, I have no money–money is only earned from those activities in the game itself. →  Read the rest