Category Archives: Games

Games

Ships of Eve Online

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This familiar side-by-side comparison of the different ship types in Eve Online was updated not too long ago to include the Titans, the largest ships available in the game. You can download a full size 4.65 mb version of the image here. Seeing it really rams home the breathtaking scale that this game works on.

I don’t have time for an MMO because playing one would mean having to skip all other games, but I did, the game I’d play would be Eve. It’s easily the most unique and ambitious of all the MMOs and really the only one that hands the power to shape the universe into the hands of the players.

I note that the game has had plenty of problems lately, what with the uncovering of a conspiracy that might have enabled some of the more powerful corporations in the game to exploit a glitch to create some 3 trillion ISK of goods in the economy and the current financial problems in Iceland, where Eve is based. The latest rumour is that CCP might move out of Iceland to make things easier for itself since most of its revenues come from outside the country anyway.

I might not play Eve, but I always enjoy reading the news and war reports coming out of the game and there’s no other MMO that I’d wish more to have a long and healthy life.

Games, Politics

Sarah Palin wins the U.S. Presidency

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Or she does in my game of The Political Machine 2008 Express anyway. I recently discovered that Stardock had made available a stripped down version of TPM 2008 as a free download when I was moving all of my Stardock-published games from the no longer supported Stardock Central to the shiny new Impulse platform. I’ve never played any version of The Political Machine before, but I’ve heard plenty about them, so I went ahead to download and play this demo version. This version only allows you to play the 2008 campaign lasting 21 weeks long with a choice of only four candidates: John McCain or Sarah Palin for the Republicans or Barack Obama or Joe Biden for the Democrats.

As a contrarian, I picked Palin for my candidate. I’d expected to lose horribly even at beginner difficulty, but surprisingly managed to eke out a win by two electoral votes while losing the popular votes. I immediately restarted at normal difficulty and with a much better understanding of the game now, managed to win a landslide victory against Obama. I next tried playing as Obama, expecting an even easier victory, and promptly got whupped by McCain. I call shenanigans (especially since Brad Wardell of Stardock is fairly well known among gaming circles as a Republican supporter).

As a strategy game, I wasn’t really impressed enough with the demo to be interested in buying the full game. It’s novel for a while, but I’d much rather be playing a more traditional strategy game that’s about killing and conquering your enemies, rather than trying to be more persuasive than them. What’s really interesting about this is how useful it is an educational and visualization tool for understanding the U.S. presidential elections. You’ll understand how winning the election is all about maximizing your electoral votes. It’s far better to have a solid majority in a state worth a whole lot of votes than be moderately popular in a smattering of smaller ones.  Just like real life, winnning means concentrating all your time and money in key states even if it means you’ll be hated in others.

Check the demo out by downloading Impulse for free if you’re interested.

Games

A Game: Mercenaries 2

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There’s really only one word to describe Pandemic Studios’ Mercenaries 2: World in Flames: explosions. Just about every gripe that you might have about this game can be rebutted with that one word. Are your eyes bleeding from the crappy graphics? Blow some stuff up and enjoy all the pretty explosions. Do you find the AI-controlled soldiers comically stupid? Fire a rocket-propelled grenade into their midst and watch the explosions toss them every which way. Are you cringing from the lame story and dialog? Call down a few airstrikes randomly to make yourself feel better.

Like its predecessor, Mercenaries 2 is a Grand Theft Auto clone, except that you’re not a two-bit hood but a grizzled mercenary and the open-world environment you’ll be gallivanting around in isn’t a metropolis, but a warzone. The game is set in a near future Venezuela (a fact which pisses off Hugo Chavez to no end) that is being fought over by various factions for its oil resources. Early on, the player is brought in to help a businessman mount a coup to take control of the country but is subsequently betrayed without being paid. This sets the stage for the player to exact his revenge, while earning a tidy profit by performing missions for the various factions vying for control of the country of course.

Continue reading A Game: Mercenaries 2 →

Games

Rockstar gives PC gamers the finger

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I’ve been waiting for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto IV for a very, very long time now, but after reading everyone’s complaints about it, it’s looking more and more likely that I’ll be skipping it, at least until it gets a decent patch. Where to start with the litany of complaints?

How about the extremely lengthy and tedious installation process that requires you to sign up for and be logged into both Microsoft’s Windows Live network and Rockstar’s own Social Club network? If you’d bought this via Steam, you’d naturally need to be logged into that as well, though Steam won’t sell GTA4 to customers outside North America. If you’re a Vista 64 user, you’ll be upset to learn that you’ll have a hard time getting it to run due to a Windows Live incompatibility, despite the fact that according to Microsoft, compatibility with Vista 64 is a requirement for the Games for Windows label.

Next, if you actually manage to get the thing running but were hoping to play it using a gamepad, you’ll soon discover that the only gamepads that will work with it are the Xbox ones. PC-only gamepads, such as the ones manufactured by Saitek that I’ve been looking at buying, simply won’t work with the game.

Finally, the one that’s really big for me, is the realization that no current computer on Earth can run this game at max settings. Even IGN had performance issues running the game on a beefy system (Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 768 MB GeForce 8800 GTX with Vista 32) after turning the settings down. I think my poor 512 MB 8800GT will choke on it. Yes, the game looks good, but not that good. As many others have observed, it’s likely that Rockstar didn’t put much effort into porting the game over and optimizing it for PCs. And if you have an ATI card instead, be warned that there has been massive complaints about graphical glitches that Rockstar has said it is aware of and are looking at finding solutions for.

Fortunately for us, the PC port of GTA4’s main competitor, Saint’s Row 2, is due out in January next year. While it’s not as technically impressive as GTA4, plenty of reviewers have named it as the better game. Unless Rockstar cleans up its act and fast, that’s what I’ll be spending my time and money on.

Games

Given up on the Americas

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Okay, I’ve officially given up on finishing the Americas campaign of the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval 2. Mainly because I’ve just discovered that as New Spain, you really have only one option when conquering a native city: exterminate them all. Sure, the game presents you with the additional options of either conquering the city (relatively) peacefully or looting it for all it’s worth, but if you actually choose any of those two options you’ll just end up with a huge city full of enraged native Americans that you’d need a full stack of troops to garrison just to keep the rioting under control.

Normally, having a large population should at least confer advantages in the form of a larger tax base, making a populous city a more valuable source of income. In this campaign, however, I haven’t been able to see any noticeable increase in revenue due to a larger population, which makes exterminating them all the only viable option. Since games are all about having multiple choices and options, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, a choice that is really no choice at all is a cardinal sin.

In my game, I’ve been mostly looting the cities I’ve captured, which has caused my offensive campaign to be bogged down by the need to allocate the majority of my troops to police duty. I could “cheat” by completely abandoning the cities to the rioters so that they rebel and then move back in with my troops to conquer them all over again, only this time choosing to kill everyone, but just thinking about playing that way just takes the wind out of my sails.

So I’m done with the Americas campaign. I might come back to the other campaigns in the expansion, but after this, it’s likely to be later rather than sooner. In the meantime, I have plenty of other games to play.

Games

Driiiifting…

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I’ve still playing GRID in between bouts of killing vast numbers of nearly naked natives in Medieval 2. I’m just about done with it though. I’ve been able to win every event consistently except for the drifting ones, and although I can understand how drifting works in the game, I can’t muster the patience to practice enough to get good at it. I curse the day racing game designers decided that making drifting a separate event was a good idea, as opposed to being a technique that’s generally useful for racing on twisty tracks.

I have to admit however that it feels immensely satisfying when you actually succeed in pulling off a good drift while racing. I won my street races in Japan using the Nissan Skyline but I’ve tested the same tracks using a Subaru Impreza and I can see how much faster you can shoot through the tracks using properly executed drifting techniques. My favourite race event is actually Pro Togue, which is racing up and down twisty Japanese mountain roads, Initial D-style, against a single competitor and you’re not allowed to touch one another’s cars. You generally need a good bit of drifting to win these events. Anyway, here’s a gallery of GRID screenshots just because they look so cool.