artificial intelligence

Review – Civilization IV Beyond the Sword

by

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. My one critique is that I feel that many of the new civs have unique water-based units, and I generally feel that those are weaker than their land-based counterparts, unless you’re playing an archipelago map. →  Let’s get read-y.

Pieces of a Perfect Game: Koei’s arduous slip into mediocrity

by

Good strategy games can be hard to come by on consoles. The only company that reliably produces games in the genre is Koei, and, as I’ve noted before, their recent track record is not so good.

Koei is now widely known for their willingness to recycle old work in the form of Dynasty Warriors – to put it more nicely, they haven’t fixed anything that isn’t broken in a while. Their lesser-known, but longer-running, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is now on its eleventh iteration. I haven’t gotten the latest one yet, because by now I’ve figured it out (took me long enough): Koei has a secret recipe for the ultimate officer-based strategy game, but they insist on releasing it a piece at a time.

You don’t even have to look within the series itself. Genghis Khan 2, for example, was an entertaining little test of a familial system, in which you would marry your daughters off to the most loyal (and coincidentally ugliest) generals, and raise your sons to be good rulers (or kill them off if they sucked). →  Now is the winter of read this content.

Some more Gears to Grind

by

So despite my bickering about a page in a game manual, Gears of War ain’t too shabby. Not mind numbingly, ballistically good, but if that was a requirement for every game what would we play? I have a couple thoughts about it though; maybe you would like to hear them.

– Greg Kasavin of Gamespot said some video clip I watched about Resident Evil 4 that it was an experience he expected not to see until the next generation. Now the next gen is the current gen, and it seems that RE4 certainly set the tone for the experiences we would see. Gears of War is very much in the same vein as Resident Evil 4, and not simply because they share the same perspective. Both are finely tuned action games in which every scene is meticulously crafted and yet every fight has the potential to play out differently. Both have fluid, context sensitive controls. I really don’t see why it is so difficult to draw the comparison. →  I’m gonna take you for a read.

What Call of Duty has taught me about the Wii

by

I’m just about willing to say that Call of Duty 3 is the most important game on the Wii right now. I couldn’t even finish it, yet it showed me a lot about the console that I never thought about before (or simply disregarded as false).

For instance, we’ve all heard the complaints from lazy gamers who are afraid of being active when playing the Wii, thinking they will get tired after only a few short minutes. Even before launch this was often mocked, and once people started playing, it seemed even sillier. But it isn’t silly at all. True, most games will not tire you out – even Wii Sports won’t unless you play it like a workout. In fact I’d say the Wii makes things much less tiring by allowing you to hold the controller in a variety of positions. But Call of Duty can tire you out.

Being a WW2 shooter, you are constantly at risk of being shot at, thus you must constantly be ready to aim. →  Up to 6 billion readers.

Beyond the news – Civ 4 expansion musings

by

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. The AI is also slated to receive a long overdue upgrade, including the AI focusing on culture victories and better utilizing naval and the new units. →  Ring of Read

Gears of Warrghh

by

I spent this past weekend post graduation at my friend’s house waiting for a Monday job interview. This of course means that Sunday night was a rare chance for me to play some 360, and this time there was only one choice as to what I was pulling off his his bookshelf; Gears of War.

What I played of the game was pretty fun – I think – but that’s not what I’m here to discuss. The thing on my mind is page one of the instruction manual. You probably don’t know what I’m talking about, even if you own the game (no one reads manuals but me right?), but it contains an introduction to the game by Cliffy B. He goes on about how it has great AI and physics and graphics, but mostly discusses what he did to create a truly “next-generation” game.

This little, one page essay genuinely bothered me. I’m sure it got a lot of gamers excited to play. →  In all ages, hypocrites, called producers, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called publishers.

Turning up the difficulty

by

In my last column I talked about mindless games and whether such a concept actually makes sense. Today, we talk about something else that stems from this debate. Usually when I read a review of a “mindless” game that I myself have played, the first thing to come to me is not “they’re kind of right” or “they’re kind of wrong”. The question on my mind is “did they play it on hard?”

When I was a kid I didn’t play games on any sort of difficulty – few NES games actually had a difficulty setting; you played against whatever they threw at you. When difficulties did start popping up, it was always Easy mode for me. This was because I only got two, maybe three new games a year, so there was no concept of being stuck and putting it away. When I got my first job I simply wanted to get my hard earned money’s worth. I was a sucker for easy, and it never seemed like a problem. →  Tony Hawk’s Posting Ground

Review – Godfather: Blackhand Edition

by

There seems to be a belief among some third party developers that in order to make a Wii game, it is essential to attach meaningless gestures to everything you do. The best example is Red Steel, which forces the player to drag and drop icons on the main menu or shake the remote several times to open a door (because the first time it didn’t respond properly). This leads to cranky reviewers dropping two, maybe even three points from their final score because they simply can’t be bothered with such annoyances.

Then you have a game like The Godfather: Blackhand Edition. None of its menus require Wii gestures. When you swing the remote to open a door, it actually works. Or you can just hit the A button and be done with it. A lot of folks have worried about the Wii receiving lackluster ports with tacked on Wii controls, but with The Godfather EA has found the sweet spot, providing us with an already good game and making it better with motion controls that are logical, responsive, and never unnecessary. →  I’ll read you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!

Review – Rogue Galaxy

by

It’s not often you come across two games released in quick succession that sound as similar as Final Fantasy XII and Rogue Galaxy. FFXII has Sky Pirates; RG has Space Pirates. Both start off in a desert town. FFXII takes several plot points from Star Wars, RG takes several characters from Star Wars. The main characters even sound rather similar for a while.

But I digress. They are actually very different games, and although comparison would be fun, it wouldn’t do as an unbiased review.

In Rogue Galaxy, you follow the story of Jaster, a young native of the desert planet Rosa who wants to explore space. Through a few coincidences, he is mistaken for a famous mercenary and hired to work for a group of space pirates, led by the notorious Dorgengoa. Soon enough, you find out about an ancient treasure-filled planet and Dorgengoa assigns to you the task of finding the way there.

The “space pirate” part is where the story unfortunately breaks down somewhat. →  What can change the nature of a post?

Two Gamecubes duct taped together

by

Chris Hecker angered a lot of people by calling the Wii a piece of shit at this years Game Developer’s Conference. The thrust of his “argument” seems to be that games are art and Nintendo is focusing solely on making entertainment, not art, and therefore Nintendo is bad. It’s worth noting that on his website Chris says he is the Editor at large of Game Developer magazine, yet their website and the february issue I hold in my hands neglect to mention he holds any position there. But back to the issue at hand – some of the videolamer staff have been kind enough to tell us their thoughts on the situation.

Pat says:
This speech took place during a “rant” session, which seems to encourage hyperbolic, polarizing comments. So while my first reaction was “Who cares?” my second reaction was about his argument that the Wii does not have the processing power for complicated AI. I know nothing about hardware specs, but that does seem like a potential problem. →  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and read!