Wednesday, December 1, 2010

December Open Thread

Y'all want to talk, and you want to talk games and systems and related things.  I get it.  Chatter away. :)

24 comments:

  1. Hmmmmm. You make a good case! My problem these days is not enough time for games. Due to the whole adult/parent thing, I've generally only got time for 1-2 games these days, and one of them is almost always an MMO. Currently my "off game" is League of Legends, but I suspect that will shift over to Elemental for a bit, then Diablo 3 when that comes out (and at that point well... all bets are off!). There's so much out there I want to play - but things like this, good quality, TIME CONSUMING games... man they scare me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've tried to get into this a few times but just couldn't do it. BUT I WANT TO. Everything about it screams "play me", yet when I played the demo I got bored.

    That's Stardock isn't it? I'm waiting for the "big" Elemental patch so I can pick that up because...hello how many games are trying to follow-up MoM??

    ReplyDelete
  3. Didn't you have to like, turn of disasters or else using the code too many times would get your city destroyed? Or maybe that was Sim City 1? I have vague memories of building awesome, cheated cities only to have them multi disastered to the ground.

    I've found that, in my old age, that a properly built city that actually turns a profit, small though it may be, is much more satisfying (SC3k is installed currently, but rarely played). I also feel like I'm learning something about city planning, although I seriously doubt it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can make it easy or hard, there's a ton of control over complexity. For veteran gamers, starting with a large map (dozens of planets) difficult enemies and fast pace of play might be the way to go. You can also set available resources at low, medium or high. The demo totally ignores the concept of pace of play and gives no sense of how absorbing gameplay can be. Watch out for those pirates and keep your fleet lumped such that undefended planets are no more than one hop away from a task force. Jumps between planets take awhile. Pirates work quickly. Also, finding the right mix of abilities amongst ships and selecting upgrades based on ship capabilities seems to be important. Favorite Frigate = Illuminator. Loss of planets means loss of associated assets. So while you need an increased asset base to build your fleet, and go get more resources and more assets, each new planet brings another defensive burden. The Yin and Yang of offense/defense, invest (planets) or spend (ships, upgrades; non-military powers) while facing unpredictable outside threats, and unpredictable requirements to negotiate with your enemies, is the whole appeal of the game. Don't invest in capital ships too soon. Many small ships attacking fewer large enemies looks sound in the early going. Amassing a 2:1 numeric advantage of small vs. medium ships has worked almost 100%. Capital ships aren't needed until you've got several planets, good tax revenues and a good pace of resource accretion. Thus far, I've seen no shortcuts, no broad strategy that assures success, no path to the perfect win. My guess is that you've got to execute a major strategy shift to win, but, I'm just getting started. (Can't say enough about kids and decision-making - it's like you can trick kids into an awesome tutorial on adult-level, real-life decision-making skills by just handing them a game. They'll have no idea! Then, if the parents get familiar with it, they've got a nice set of insider metaphors with which to guide kid behavior)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I developed my own little system of putting in a cheat code exactly once, exactly when I needed it, in order to give full funding to my programs of choice early on. After that I could always make my cities profitable.

    I wonder if I can even find a copy of SC2K and make it run on my machine? I think I still have my cities backed up somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  6. How old are your little ones? I'm always blown away and a bit disturbed by the fact that any kindergartner in the country can pretty much kick my ass at any non-puzzle, non-text game.

    ReplyDelete
  7. MarioKart Wii is a lot of fun. My niece loves it and she's 3. She doesn't know how to play at all but it doesn't matter.

    ReplyDelete
  8. New Vegas should come in the mail this week. Any tips, especially w'r't mods?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Does Farcry get interesting? Or is its reputation based on graphics and FPS mechanics which have since been superseded? I bought a copy for $5 but I'm not loving it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I found the others (plus a "better binoculars" one that comes highly recommended) but where did you get the increased weight limit? I tolerated that annoyance in FO3, but since you say merchants can't lighten your load I'll happily do without that bit of realism in NV.

    ReplyDelete
  11. That's where I've been looking but I guess I missed it. What do you use third person for? I'd decide against it because I never used it in FO3 except by hitting the wrong key during combat (I remapped it to something out of the way to solve that).

    ReplyDelete
  12. I use third person when I'm out exploring the Wasteland, particularly when I'm trying to find map landmarks or ways over / around things and so on -- basically, when I'm in wide open spaces and I need to get a wide-angle fix on things.

    (I wasn't kidding when I said I was obsessive with the map; I hit the achievement for 175 locations discovered and kept going.)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ahh good, sounds about right then, my son is a little older.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Gotta say I can't recall hearing anything about it other than its uses for benchmarking.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Still catching up. Recently got Sins of a Solar Empire, which as you all know won a truckload of awards two years ago. Can't help but think that Solar Empire is one of the best games kids could play. No blood, gore or hands-on shooting, just tons of decision-making. Great lessons in risk/return thinking and balancing consumption with investment. The thought process needed to succeed in Solar Empire is the mirror opposite of someone who would, for example, buy way more house than they need with a mortgage they couldn't afford. Imagine being 10 years old and having to decide whether to invest in planet development (which increases tax revenue) or spend on weapons. Kids who get enough of such disguised lessons will grow up to be adults who weigh square footage (which earns no income) against an investment portfolio (that does). The visuals are great, game play is extensive and the only negative is that Solar Empire contains a black hole called "your time". Fire it up and - poof! - there went four hours. Good thing I don't have any homework.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yeah, sounds right up his alley then! Especially with the steering wheel. :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Imagine being 10 years old and having to decide whether to invest in planet development (which increases tax revenue) or spend on weapons.

    Well, when you're me, and you're 12 or 13, and it's SimCity 2000... you go look up cheat codes, so that you get the cash to fully fund both hospitals *and* schools. After raising sin taxes, of course. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Oh. I won't bother then, I feel naked wandering around without a gun out. Even in Mass Effect when there's a much more "and now we're gonna fight" transition.

    ReplyDelete
  19. you know, i'd only heard vague praises of that game, but after reading this i went and looked up more detailed info about it. i'm seriously, seriously considering investing in it now. awesome stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Update on the introduce kids to Mario Kart experiment:

    They both refuse to play still, but love watching us play it.

    Progress especially for my oldest, who no longer runs screaming from the room yelling "turn it off!" when I turn on the Wii and he sees the Wii home menu.

    Also: I finally caved and bought Elemental. Eventually I'll blog about it, but the short of it is that it gets bogged down on my laptop, but I see a ton of potential in it.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I found it on New Vegas Nexus, same as the others. Oh, and I remembered the other mod I use: I downloaded one that moves your third-person camera so that when you switch to that view it's actually useful. (I mix up the first- and third-person views in Fallout.)

    I also have the GECK for making my own mods, but I haven't thought of anything I want to do yet.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Make sure you patch it first.

    The Wiki ( http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout:_New_Vegas ) will save your butt -- not so much in terms of walkthroughs or spoilers or whatever, but it's got lists of bugs for all of the characters, locations, items, and so on -- so when something's driving you crazy, you can find out quickly if it's you, or if it's the game.

    As far as mods... I've got one running that increases your weight limit by 100, because there's just too damn much stuff and not enough places to sell it. (I kept to Megaton and Rivet City as sell-off bases in F3, but I feel like most of my merchants don't tend to have as many caps in New Vegas.)

    The Radio New Vegas mods are available (+20, +40, +60, +80, or +100 songs), and at least the +20 is recommended, as there are only about 10 songs in Mr. New Vegas's playlist. (Although in the beginning you might want to catch the news more often, just to get a feel for what's going on. Mr. New Vegas doesn't extol your exploits as much as Three Dog does, but you can hear your effect on the world in the news that gets delivered.)

    There's also an interface mod that makes the text smaller and better-wrapping so you can see more than ten words on-screen at the same time, I'm a fan of that one. I think the weight increase and the text-size mod are the only real must-haves for me.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Happy fun times! I don't have the time to keep up on the TNC threads these days...so busy (at work! - at home I'm gaming or parenting ;) ).

    So I was thinking of getting the bigger little one Mario Kart for the wii - I mean, it has a steering wheel, how can a little kid who loves cars not like that? It will be his first video game... see how that goes in about 3 weeks.

    In other gaming news: I still love City of Heroes - the latest update is chock full of goodness with an actual interesting endgame (max level content). I haven't been interested in an MMO's endgame content pretty much ever, but this actually looks interesting - mostly for plot reasons!

    ReplyDelete