About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Blood Bowl 2 smashes Warhammer and American football together, in an explosive cocktail of turn-based strategy, humour and brutality, adapted from Games Workshop’s famous boardgame.
Blood Bowl 2’s new graphics engine and high-flying realization makes for a faithful portrayal of the fury and intensity of classic Blood Bowl matches. The solo game mode will have you lead the famous Reikland Reavers. Former star team of Blood Bowl you are tasked with bringing them back to glory, following a full story campaign supported by the hilarious commentators Jim & Bob from Cabalvision. Each match of the campaign is unique, with unexpected and surprising events constantly renewing the experience!
The multiplayer modes are bigger and richer than ever. In the persistent online mode, create and manage your own team comprised of one of eight races from the Warhammer world – Humans, Orcs, Dwarfs, Skaven, High Elves, Dark Elves, Chaos, and the Bretonnia newcomers. You will develop your team, gaining XP and unlocking new skills. But beware! On the pitch, all losses are permanent... Organize entirely customisable championships, from qualifications to finale, and use the new Transfer Market to buy and sell your players, and build your Blood Bowl dream-team!
The next generation of Blood Bowl touches down today, will YOU be the champion?
Previous Playtime
0 hours
Expectations and Prior Experience
I have the first Blood Bowl for the xbox360, but I didn't play it much. I first got it back before I got an HDTV and the text was much too small for me to make my way through the tutorial. By the time I had finally gotten a modern television, I had moved on to other things. I did play part of a match online with a friend, but I was completely out of my depth.
On the surface, Blood Bowl 2 looks appealing - a turn-based rpg inspired by American football, but filtered through the sensibility of an irreverent British fantasy setting. My only concern is that it may take longer than 20 hours to come to grips with the nuances of the game's strategy, and thus I will spend the bulk of my time as a hapless novice, losing game after game and not really understanding why.
But that's par for the course with new strategy games. It's equally likely that everything will be fine and I'll be brawling up a storm in no time.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
Chess 2: The Sequel - 20/20 hours
The final 10 hours were an ordeal, even if I did spend a combined 2-3 hours periodically checking the multiplayer to see if there was anyone online looking for a game (there weren't). I won almost every game I played. Dozens of them, all in a row, only occasionally getting fatigued and distracted enough for the AI to squeak out a midline invasion. It wasn't boring so much as pointless. It was a solved problem. The AI was never going to give me a challenge (the occasional lazy oversight notwithstanding). In fact, I grew to suspect that it chose its moves almost entirely at random. I also couldn't choose which armies I fought against, so comparing various match-ups was haphazard at best.
I guess I'm a little resentful of the fact that Chess 2 was not the game I thought it was going to be. I was hoping that it would be a toybox of variants, where I would have a myriad of options to customize my chess experience. Instead, it was a singular vision of chess that gave me one axis of freedom (with the army selection), but was otherwise less customizable than even the chess games I played back in the 90s.
It's probably unreasonable of me to project my hopes onto this game, just because of a half-remembered reading of its Steam pitch. It is what it is, and if I'm imagining another game in its place, I might as well wish it was Civiization V for all that my desires are relevant. However, seeing as how Chess 2: The Sequel feels like it was hastily put together and incomplete, wishing for more doesn't feel as ungrateful as it might otherwise.
I'll wrap up this post with my thoughts on the six armies before I put this behind me forever and go back to traditional chess.
The classic army was, surprisingly, one of the strongest. You wouldn't think a single piece could be that much of an influence on the game's strategy, but the queen is so powerful that it outweighs the other armies' gimmicks.
The nemesis army allows you to move pawns sideways if doing so brings them closer to the king and replaces the queen with the nemesis, a piece that moves like a traditional queen, but can only capture and be captured by the king. I got the feeling that it was very technical, but since the pawns don't get a double move and the queen was mainly useful as a defensive piece (blocking enemy movement and shutting down a whole row for the enemy's mainline invasion) I found it slow and unwieldy, and playing against an AI nemesis was just a slog.
The empowered army gives your rooks, knights, and bishops the ability to move like each other, provided they are in adjacent squares. This was probably my favorite army, because it allowed me to get my big pieces out fast and pursue a really aggressive strategy. It also allowed for some clever combination moves that were entirely wasted on the computer.
The last three armies, I never saw the AI play, probably because they were so different it couldn't handle them.
The two kings army gives you two kings and gives the kings an extra move and special "whirlwind attack" that can capture all adjacent pieces (friend or foe). Twice the kings means twice the vulnerability to checkmates, so I always tried to wrap it up fast and rush towards the midline invasion. It turned out to be pretty powerful, but playing it was an ordeal. It always felt like I was constantly under fire, thanks to my double weakness.
The reaper army was the most gimmicky of the six. Your queen was replaced a "reaper" which could move to any square on the board and capture any piece that wasn't on the back row, and your rooks were replaced by "ghosts" which could teleport anywhere on the board, but which could neither capture nor be captured. This army proved to be the worst defensively, and every time I used it, I wound up just clearing out all the enemy's pieces because the AI could not understand protecting or threatening. I imagine it would be tedious to play against in multiplayer, though. Any gap in your defense could be instantly pounced upon.
Finally, the animal army, the one most different from standard chess. I'm not going to list every difference, because there are lots. The bishop, knight, rook, and queen are all changed to move differently than their standard counterparts. I was surprised how quickly I got used to it, though. It was probably the army most deserving of being called "chess 2," exotic enough that it refreshed the game, but polished enough that its alternate movement modes worked together. A game that was nothing but animal vs animal could work on its own, which is more than you can say for any army but the classic.
Overall, Chess 2: The Sequel was a noble experiment. If you want a more chaotic, less skill-heavy version of chess that can be won or lost in 5-10 minutes, you could probably do worse, but I wouldn't recommend buying the video game version unless you're coordinating with a friend to try multiplayer at exactly the same time. There was nothing in the video game version that you couldn't do better by downloading the rules (available here for free from the company's website) and playing face to face.
I guess I'm a little resentful of the fact that Chess 2 was not the game I thought it was going to be. I was hoping that it would be a toybox of variants, where I would have a myriad of options to customize my chess experience. Instead, it was a singular vision of chess that gave me one axis of freedom (with the army selection), but was otherwise less customizable than even the chess games I played back in the 90s.
It's probably unreasonable of me to project my hopes onto this game, just because of a half-remembered reading of its Steam pitch. It is what it is, and if I'm imagining another game in its place, I might as well wish it was Civiization V for all that my desires are relevant. However, seeing as how Chess 2: The Sequel feels like it was hastily put together and incomplete, wishing for more doesn't feel as ungrateful as it might otherwise.
I'll wrap up this post with my thoughts on the six armies before I put this behind me forever and go back to traditional chess.
The classic army was, surprisingly, one of the strongest. You wouldn't think a single piece could be that much of an influence on the game's strategy, but the queen is so powerful that it outweighs the other armies' gimmicks.
The nemesis army allows you to move pawns sideways if doing so brings them closer to the king and replaces the queen with the nemesis, a piece that moves like a traditional queen, but can only capture and be captured by the king. I got the feeling that it was very technical, but since the pawns don't get a double move and the queen was mainly useful as a defensive piece (blocking enemy movement and shutting down a whole row for the enemy's mainline invasion) I found it slow and unwieldy, and playing against an AI nemesis was just a slog.
The empowered army gives your rooks, knights, and bishops the ability to move like each other, provided they are in adjacent squares. This was probably my favorite army, because it allowed me to get my big pieces out fast and pursue a really aggressive strategy. It also allowed for some clever combination moves that were entirely wasted on the computer.
The last three armies, I never saw the AI play, probably because they were so different it couldn't handle them.
The two kings army gives you two kings and gives the kings an extra move and special "whirlwind attack" that can capture all adjacent pieces (friend or foe). Twice the kings means twice the vulnerability to checkmates, so I always tried to wrap it up fast and rush towards the midline invasion. It turned out to be pretty powerful, but playing it was an ordeal. It always felt like I was constantly under fire, thanks to my double weakness.
The reaper army was the most gimmicky of the six. Your queen was replaced a "reaper" which could move to any square on the board and capture any piece that wasn't on the back row, and your rooks were replaced by "ghosts" which could teleport anywhere on the board, but which could neither capture nor be captured. This army proved to be the worst defensively, and every time I used it, I wound up just clearing out all the enemy's pieces because the AI could not understand protecting or threatening. I imagine it would be tedious to play against in multiplayer, though. Any gap in your defense could be instantly pounced upon.
Finally, the animal army, the one most different from standard chess. I'm not going to list every difference, because there are lots. The bishop, knight, rook, and queen are all changed to move differently than their standard counterparts. I was surprised how quickly I got used to it, though. It was probably the army most deserving of being called "chess 2," exotic enough that it refreshed the game, but polished enough that its alternate movement modes worked together. A game that was nothing but animal vs animal could work on its own, which is more than you can say for any army but the classic.
Overall, Chess 2: The Sequel was a noble experiment. If you want a more chaotic, less skill-heavy version of chess that can be won or lost in 5-10 minutes, you could probably do worse, but I wouldn't recommend buying the video game version unless you're coordinating with a friend to try multiplayer at exactly the same time. There was nothing in the video game version that you couldn't do better by downloading the rules (available here for free from the company's website) and playing face to face.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Chess 2: The Sequel - 10/20 hours
This game may well break me. The AI is so bad. I think I may be getting worse at chess by playing it. It really does have to be seen to be believed. I am in the unusual position of being bad at chess, but also moderately well-read on chess theory. So when I make a bad move, I know it almost immediately, and I can usually understand why it's a bad move (and yet somehow I can never translate this knowledge to effective strategy - if only there were some way to train my foresight to be as perceptive as my hindsight). And yet for all of that, the Chess 2 AI makes mistakes that stagger even me. I'll make an impulsive move, grabbing some flashy, but unnecessary capture, and after the fact I'll see clear as day that I left an opening for my opponent to win in 2-3 moves, but then the AI will do something completely baffling, like retreat their king, or move a rook into a threatened square when it could move one square more, capture one my pieces, and wind up unthreatened.
I'm beginning to suspect that the AI moves pieces more or less at random. At the very least, it doesn't understand threatened or protected squares. You can't play chess against opponent who lacks that knowledge. I'm not sure what I've been doing for the last 10 hours, but it hasn't been chess.
The culprit is probably the "duel" rule. It sucks the life completely out of the game and I don't think the AI can handle it. How it works is that you have a number of stones - up to 6, but you start with 3 and gain more by capturing enemy pawns. Whenever the opponent captures one of your pieces, you have the option of declaring a duel. When you do, you and your opponent secretly bid 0, 1, or 2 stones. Then you reveal your bids simultaneously and if the defending player bid more stones than the attack, then the attacking piece is removed from the board (the defending piece is always captured, regardless of the outcome of the bids). There are some additional nuances, but that's the gist of it.
It's my working theory that when the AI calculates its next move, if you have stones and the AI doesn't (easy enough when you aggressively hunt pawns), it counts capturing a piece as sacrificing one of its own. It's gotten so that I'll deliberately move into threatened squares in order to set up a capture 2 moves down the line. And while this has occasionally backfired on me, it has proven safe more often than not. I already have a problem with overlooking my opponent's defense. This is only going to make my habit worse.
The other major rules change is the midline invasion alternate victory condition. It's difficult to say exactly how I feel about it, because I've not yet faced an opponent who has used it well. I've lost a couple of times, thanks to it, but that was before I learned to defend against it. It's clear in retrospect that those losses were pure chance. I've seen the AI, on multiple occasions, pass up the opportunity to clear or obstruct my defense and then win on the following move. It certainly doesn't have the wherewithal to make a concerted attack on a hardened position.
But how would I imagine it might work, were I to face a competent adversary? That's where it gets hard to pin down. To win with a midline invasion, you have to move your king across the halfway point on the board, to any space in row 5. The one caveat is that you cannot move your king into check. If a square on row 5 is threatened, you have to remove the obstruction before you can move into it.
My experience so far has been that mainline invasion is a perfunctory victory condition, one you pursue when the enemy is substantially broken, and it's easier to advance your king 4 times in a row than maneuver into a checkmate. But if I were playing against someone who could attack effectively, who would capture as many of my pieces as I did theirs, I can see how it might change the endgame. The question is "into what?"
The endgame in chess is, ideally, a battle of wits. An attempt to use the rules of the game to maneuver your opponent into a losing position. And while victory of one side or the other is often a foregone conclusion, a canny player can play defensively and force a draw.
Chess 2 removes stalemates from the equation. If you have no legal move, you lose. A losing player can theoretically win by moving their king across mid line, but it's hard to see how they could force it. What's more likely is that the leading player will advance their king as an alternative to seeking a checkmate. This is faster and more efficient than the traditional endgame, but vitiates the puzzle aspect of traditional chess.
I'd have to see to see what it looks like when two good players go up against each other. I know that when it's a bad player versus a terrible player midline invasion tends to make matches short and anticlimactic, but it's possible that two properly matched players could turn it into a tense battle of wits.
It's nice to think that's a possibility. From my position, Chess 2: The Sequel is just a series of pointless 7-minute exercises in navigating the geometry of a chessboard. I'm not being challenged at all and while I normally appreciate easy wins in games, this is different. It feels like I'm disrespecting the very game of chess itself.
I'm beginning to suspect that the AI moves pieces more or less at random. At the very least, it doesn't understand threatened or protected squares. You can't play chess against opponent who lacks that knowledge. I'm not sure what I've been doing for the last 10 hours, but it hasn't been chess.
The culprit is probably the "duel" rule. It sucks the life completely out of the game and I don't think the AI can handle it. How it works is that you have a number of stones - up to 6, but you start with 3 and gain more by capturing enemy pawns. Whenever the opponent captures one of your pieces, you have the option of declaring a duel. When you do, you and your opponent secretly bid 0, 1, or 2 stones. Then you reveal your bids simultaneously and if the defending player bid more stones than the attack, then the attacking piece is removed from the board (the defending piece is always captured, regardless of the outcome of the bids). There are some additional nuances, but that's the gist of it.
It's my working theory that when the AI calculates its next move, if you have stones and the AI doesn't (easy enough when you aggressively hunt pawns), it counts capturing a piece as sacrificing one of its own. It's gotten so that I'll deliberately move into threatened squares in order to set up a capture 2 moves down the line. And while this has occasionally backfired on me, it has proven safe more often than not. I already have a problem with overlooking my opponent's defense. This is only going to make my habit worse.
The other major rules change is the midline invasion alternate victory condition. It's difficult to say exactly how I feel about it, because I've not yet faced an opponent who has used it well. I've lost a couple of times, thanks to it, but that was before I learned to defend against it. It's clear in retrospect that those losses were pure chance. I've seen the AI, on multiple occasions, pass up the opportunity to clear or obstruct my defense and then win on the following move. It certainly doesn't have the wherewithal to make a concerted attack on a hardened position.
But how would I imagine it might work, were I to face a competent adversary? That's where it gets hard to pin down. To win with a midline invasion, you have to move your king across the halfway point on the board, to any space in row 5. The one caveat is that you cannot move your king into check. If a square on row 5 is threatened, you have to remove the obstruction before you can move into it.
My experience so far has been that mainline invasion is a perfunctory victory condition, one you pursue when the enemy is substantially broken, and it's easier to advance your king 4 times in a row than maneuver into a checkmate. But if I were playing against someone who could attack effectively, who would capture as many of my pieces as I did theirs, I can see how it might change the endgame. The question is "into what?"
The endgame in chess is, ideally, a battle of wits. An attempt to use the rules of the game to maneuver your opponent into a losing position. And while victory of one side or the other is often a foregone conclusion, a canny player can play defensively and force a draw.
Chess 2 removes stalemates from the equation. If you have no legal move, you lose. A losing player can theoretically win by moving their king across mid line, but it's hard to see how they could force it. What's more likely is that the leading player will advance their king as an alternative to seeking a checkmate. This is faster and more efficient than the traditional endgame, but vitiates the puzzle aspect of traditional chess.
I'd have to see to see what it looks like when two good players go up against each other. I know that when it's a bad player versus a terrible player midline invasion tends to make matches short and anticlimactic, but it's possible that two properly matched players could turn it into a tense battle of wits.
It's nice to think that's a possibility. From my position, Chess 2: The Sequel is just a series of pointless 7-minute exercises in navigating the geometry of a chessboard. I'm not being challenged at all and while I normally appreciate easy wins in games, this is different. It feels like I'm disrespecting the very game of chess itself.
Monday, March 26, 2018
Chess 2: The Sequel - 2/20 hours
I'm a little disappointed. I went into this with a bit of dread. I half-expected something that would task me, repeatedly beat me down until I lost all hope and just began thoughtlessly clicking away at buttons to make it go away. Then maybe, slowly, I would get a little better and learn a little something about the nature of chess. I thought it would be something that would test me. And I feared that I wouldn't pass.
Unfortunately, Chess 2 is not that good a game. The rules are interesting, and apparently people can and do play it face-to-face. It's easy to see how it might have a niche as a fast and casual game whose complexity and asymmetry render the skill differences in regular chess less significant. It would certainly make for a fun warm-up or cool-down game for a club or casual tournament.
However, its video game implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It only has one single-player mode, and, unlike other chess video games I've played in the past, has only one available chess set. There's only one difficulty level and you can't even adjust the sound settings. It's just overall shoddily put together and probably incomplete (there's a greyed-out entry on the menu called "Challenges" that doesn't do anything).
And yet, that all wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the terrible AI. How bad is it? Let's just put it this way - it's so bad that even I can win games more often than not. And that's not just me being excessively self-deprecating. The game just straight up makes bad moves. It will let me threaten pieces without guarding them or let me capture guarded pieces without retaliating. There have been time where I've wreaked havoc behind the enemy's pawns because the AI couldn't recognize a pattern.
Which makes it all the more embarrassing that I've lost at least three times. I'm not used to Chess 2's new victory condition. I'll be dominating in terms of material and (for a traditional game) position, and then suddenly the enemy king will move towards the halfway line and I'll realize that I have no pieces in place to block its movement. Because why would you do something so colossally foolish as to move your king boldly out into the open with no protection, especially while the opponent is demolishing all your pieces. But, of course, if you win the game by doing it . . .
Anyway, I'll leave a more in-depth analysis for a future blog post. For now, I'm optimistic that I won't spiral into an inescapable swamp of self-loathing, but I'm also pretty sure that I won't improve my regular chess game. I'll have to wait and see if the tradeoff is worth it.
Unfortunately, Chess 2 is not that good a game. The rules are interesting, and apparently people can and do play it face-to-face. It's easy to see how it might have a niche as a fast and casual game whose complexity and asymmetry render the skill differences in regular chess less significant. It would certainly make for a fun warm-up or cool-down game for a club or casual tournament.
However, its video game implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It only has one single-player mode, and, unlike other chess video games I've played in the past, has only one available chess set. There's only one difficulty level and you can't even adjust the sound settings. It's just overall shoddily put together and probably incomplete (there's a greyed-out entry on the menu called "Challenges" that doesn't do anything).
And yet, that all wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the terrible AI. How bad is it? Let's just put it this way - it's so bad that even I can win games more often than not. And that's not just me being excessively self-deprecating. The game just straight up makes bad moves. It will let me threaten pieces without guarding them or let me capture guarded pieces without retaliating. There have been time where I've wreaked havoc behind the enemy's pawns because the AI couldn't recognize a pattern.
Which makes it all the more embarrassing that I've lost at least three times. I'm not used to Chess 2's new victory condition. I'll be dominating in terms of material and (for a traditional game) position, and then suddenly the enemy king will move towards the halfway line and I'll realize that I have no pieces in place to block its movement. Because why would you do something so colossally foolish as to move your king boldly out into the open with no protection, especially while the opponent is demolishing all your pieces. But, of course, if you win the game by doing it . . .
Anyway, I'll leave a more in-depth analysis for a future blog post. For now, I'm optimistic that I won't spiral into an inescapable swamp of self-loathing, but I'm also pretty sure that I won't improve my regular chess game. I'll have to wait and see if the tradeoff is worth it.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Chess 2: The Sequel - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Chess 2: The Sequel is the next step in the evolution of chess tuned for more viable options, strategic interest, and years and years of expert play.
There are six armies to choose from, each with their own abilities and unique flavor:
The 21 matchups and 36 opening books reward strategy and positional play from the very first move, not rote memorization.
If you cross the midline of the board with your king (midline invasion), you win. This makes for faster, more dynamic, and more aggressive games while eliminating the draw problem that plagues high-level chess.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I have game acquisition stories that are more frivolous or embarrassing, but not many. I like the title. It inspired a brief chuckle and so I impulsively threw this game in my cart. It's like, "you know Chess, the most iconic and widespread board game to ever exist, well, after 1500 years, we're releasing the long-awaited sequel - Chess 2." It's so breath-takingly arrogant that I can't help but admire the audacity.
Expectations and Prior Experience
My relationship with chess is rather fraught. When I was young, I had a vague idea that I would someday master the game. I read books about chess strategy. I got pretty good at solving chess puzzles (where they show a board position and then ask questions like "how does black checkmate in four moves?")
The one thing I didn't do is play games of actual chess. I was a lonely child, with few friends, and much too socially anxious to get involved with clubs and other group activities. In the late 90s, I received a game called Virtual Chess 64 as a gift and I resolved to practice rigorously until I achieved some notable skill, but I kept losing on the easiest difficulty level, despite the game's advertised "artificial stupidity." Eventually, I became frustrated and demoralized and quit trying. It's probably been at least a decade since I last played.
I expect that Chess 2 will be a fast complete for me, just on a mechanical level. It's a turn-based strategy game with near endless variation, and I can click on buttons indefinitely. I also expect it to be a difficult emotional journey. I've developed something of a mental block when it comes to this game. It seems like the sort of thing I should be good at, but I've become convinced that it's a fundamental aspect of my identity that I'm not.
The best case scenario here is that the silly rules changes to the "sequel" make this game enough unlike chess that I just sort of stumble through it. Otherwise, you all are in for the most melodramatic Chess blogging to ever see print.
Chess 2: The Sequel is the next step in the evolution of chess tuned for more viable options, strategic interest, and years and years of expert play.
There are six armies to choose from, each with their own abilities and unique flavor:
- Classic: The original army from classic chess and the only army with a queen.
- Two Kings: Two warrior kings with a powerful attack and extra move.
- Empowered: Bishops, knights, and rooks gain each other's movement powers when adjacent.
- Animals: A wild mix of atypical attacks that are difficult to defend against.
- Nemesis: Focused attack on the enemy king for those who prefer checkmates.
- Reaper: Haunted army with teleportation and immortality.
The 21 matchups and 36 opening books reward strategy and positional play from the very first move, not rote memorization.
If you cross the midline of the board with your king (midline invasion), you win. This makes for faster, more dynamic, and more aggressive games while eliminating the draw problem that plagues high-level chess.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I have game acquisition stories that are more frivolous or embarrassing, but not many. I like the title. It inspired a brief chuckle and so I impulsively threw this game in my cart. It's like, "you know Chess, the most iconic and widespread board game to ever exist, well, after 1500 years, we're releasing the long-awaited sequel - Chess 2." It's so breath-takingly arrogant that I can't help but admire the audacity.
Expectations and Prior Experience
My relationship with chess is rather fraught. When I was young, I had a vague idea that I would someday master the game. I read books about chess strategy. I got pretty good at solving chess puzzles (where they show a board position and then ask questions like "how does black checkmate in four moves?")
The one thing I didn't do is play games of actual chess. I was a lonely child, with few friends, and much too socially anxious to get involved with clubs and other group activities. In the late 90s, I received a game called Virtual Chess 64 as a gift and I resolved to practice rigorously until I achieved some notable skill, but I kept losing on the easiest difficulty level, despite the game's advertised "artificial stupidity." Eventually, I became frustrated and demoralized and quit trying. It's probably been at least a decade since I last played.
I expect that Chess 2 will be a fast complete for me, just on a mechanical level. It's a turn-based strategy game with near endless variation, and I can click on buttons indefinitely. I also expect it to be a difficult emotional journey. I've developed something of a mental block when it comes to this game. It seems like the sort of thing I should be good at, but I've become convinced that it's a fundamental aspect of my identity that I'm not.
The best case scenario here is that the silly rules changes to the "sequel" make this game enough unlike chess that I just sort of stumble through it. Otherwise, you all are in for the most melodramatic Chess blogging to ever see print.
Starpoint Gemini 2 - 20/20 hours
I didn't get terribly far into the storyline. Travel ate up most of my time, and then grinding xp and credits in random missions took care of the rest. There's not much to report from the first few missions. The old empire on Earth has come back to the Gemini Sector thanks to the big warp gate being repaired and now the civil war is back on. Your character's father is a soldier in the rebellion and gets killed in an ambush. Your character vows revenge and he learns that his father had gotten hold of some important data that he subsequently split into pieces and distributed to various people you now have to do favors for in order to figure out what he knew and why it got him killed.
I'm sure there would have been some twists and turns along the way that may or may not have been shocking, depending on how invested I got into the setting and plotline. It wasn't presented very effectively, though. Talking heads appear on your screen every once in awhile and dump exposition on you, and the voice acting and character design were merely serviceable.
I was gratified to learn that campaign mode's scripted sidequests flesh out more of the details of the game's factions and territories, though I had little interest in reading the wall of text that accompanied them so I can't actually tell you anything about them.
Starpoint Gemini 2 is exactly the sort of game I would have adored 20 years ago. The setting has so much depth and there are so many nooks and crannies to explore, but it's still finite and theoretically completable. High school me would have had unlimited patience for reading text and building up the imaginative personal canon necessary to compensate for the game's lack of life. And honestly, contemporary me shares a lot of those traits, and is only really put off by a familiarity with other games that have more to do, look prettier, have easier to digest exposition, and have deeper and more varied gameplay.
I guess what I'm saying is that Starpoint Gemini 2's biggest shortcoming is that it feels like a throwback to another era. Despite its gorgeous map, I feel like it could be translated to monochrome and text with very little loss of fidelity. That's not entirely fair to the game's creators, who did a lot of laudable work (it looks great and beside a couple of UI bugs that I resolved by restarting the game, it played very smoothly), and I'm guessing it's because the overlap between "indie" and "primitive" is pretty large. They probably lacked the resources and/or expertise to make a solar system crawling with life, but sadly, that's what a space game needs.
In the end, Starpoint Gemini 2 fills exactly the same gaming niche as X3: Terran Conflict. And while it blessedly did not have anything nearly as annoying as the latter game's menus, X3's deeper economy renders it obsolete (at least for this pacifist merchant-grinding player).
Still, I got it for free, and I think of all the free games I've played, only Path of Exile was a better value. I'll probably keep my eyes on the sequel Starpoint Gemini Warlords, which promises to marry the starship combat of the first two games with 4X elements. If this game had had infrastructure optimizing, I may well have found a new addiction.
I'm sure there would have been some twists and turns along the way that may or may not have been shocking, depending on how invested I got into the setting and plotline. It wasn't presented very effectively, though. Talking heads appear on your screen every once in awhile and dump exposition on you, and the voice acting and character design were merely serviceable.
I was gratified to learn that campaign mode's scripted sidequests flesh out more of the details of the game's factions and territories, though I had little interest in reading the wall of text that accompanied them so I can't actually tell you anything about them.
Starpoint Gemini 2 is exactly the sort of game I would have adored 20 years ago. The setting has so much depth and there are so many nooks and crannies to explore, but it's still finite and theoretically completable. High school me would have had unlimited patience for reading text and building up the imaginative personal canon necessary to compensate for the game's lack of life. And honestly, contemporary me shares a lot of those traits, and is only really put off by a familiarity with other games that have more to do, look prettier, have easier to digest exposition, and have deeper and more varied gameplay.
I guess what I'm saying is that Starpoint Gemini 2's biggest shortcoming is that it feels like a throwback to another era. Despite its gorgeous map, I feel like it could be translated to monochrome and text with very little loss of fidelity. That's not entirely fair to the game's creators, who did a lot of laudable work (it looks great and beside a couple of UI bugs that I resolved by restarting the game, it played very smoothly), and I'm guessing it's because the overlap between "indie" and "primitive" is pretty large. They probably lacked the resources and/or expertise to make a solar system crawling with life, but sadly, that's what a space game needs.
In the end, Starpoint Gemini 2 fills exactly the same gaming niche as X3: Terran Conflict. And while it blessedly did not have anything nearly as annoying as the latter game's menus, X3's deeper economy renders it obsolete (at least for this pacifist merchant-grinding player).
Still, I got it for free, and I think of all the free games I've played, only Path of Exile was a better value. I'll probably keep my eyes on the sequel Starpoint Gemini Warlords, which promises to marry the starship combat of the first two games with 4X elements. If this game had had infrastructure optimizing, I may well have found a new addiction.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Starpoint Gemini 2 - 15/20 hours
I love maps. A great map tells a story through the proximity of landmarks and the linguistic relationships between names. I have a lot of wonderful memories of becoming enraptured by maps. The one in the end-pages of The Hobbit was probably my first, and the historical maps of Europa Universalis IV were my most recent, but even a plain old map of our contemporary Earth holds plenty of fascination for me.
Starpoint Gemini 2 has a pretty good map. It includes nebulae and asteroid fields, warp gates and wormholes, planets and space stations, and a variety of colorful region details. There are a lot of interesting labels to look at, and though the color-coded faction filters aren't very informative (due to a lack of a key), the patchwork of political borders in nonetheless suggestive of a richly developed universe.
Unfortunately, in the 12-14 hours it took me to uncover the map, very little of its complexity was reflected in the universe itself. Oh, sure, the stations all had their own names and I could spot a variety of (what I assume was) faction-specific architectural styles, but there was no culture to be found. No entertaining NPCs or memorable events. Exploring the Gemini Sector was almost purely a matter of moving from hex to hex, occasionally dodging a pirate attack or taking a wormhole shortcut to double back and sweep an area I overlooked. Starpoint Gemini 2 does do the space sci-fi thing where the void is a riot of colors inspired by the astrophysics practice of publishing false-color images of nebulae that can only be seen in infra-red, but it's a cliche because it works.
I also did a shit-ton of delivery and taxi missions, because if I'm going to be trekking back and forth on the map, I might as well get paid for it. Some of the stuff you have to transport have names suggestive of a broader world, but none of the missions I accepted had any sort of story or characters attached to them.
I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that "free roam" mode was an afterthought and that Starpoint Gemini 2 defines "story missions" as any mission that has any scripted dialogue whatsoever. I could probably survive quite well in the barren universe for another 5 hours, seeing as how I switched over from a gunship to a freighter and am now well-equipped to strip-mine an asteroid field, but I suspect that I should at least give the regular game a try, just to see if its massive map is justified by the amount of content available.
Starpoint Gemini 2 has a pretty good map. It includes nebulae and asteroid fields, warp gates and wormholes, planets and space stations, and a variety of colorful region details. There are a lot of interesting labels to look at, and though the color-coded faction filters aren't very informative (due to a lack of a key), the patchwork of political borders in nonetheless suggestive of a richly developed universe.
Unfortunately, in the 12-14 hours it took me to uncover the map, very little of its complexity was reflected in the universe itself. Oh, sure, the stations all had their own names and I could spot a variety of (what I assume was) faction-specific architectural styles, but there was no culture to be found. No entertaining NPCs or memorable events. Exploring the Gemini Sector was almost purely a matter of moving from hex to hex, occasionally dodging a pirate attack or taking a wormhole shortcut to double back and sweep an area I overlooked. Starpoint Gemini 2 does do the space sci-fi thing where the void is a riot of colors inspired by the astrophysics practice of publishing false-color images of nebulae that can only be seen in infra-red, but it's a cliche because it works.
I also did a shit-ton of delivery and taxi missions, because if I'm going to be trekking back and forth on the map, I might as well get paid for it. Some of the stuff you have to transport have names suggestive of a broader world, but none of the missions I accepted had any sort of story or characters attached to them.
I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that "free roam" mode was an afterthought and that Starpoint Gemini 2 defines "story missions" as any mission that has any scripted dialogue whatsoever. I could probably survive quite well in the barren universe for another 5 hours, seeing as how I switched over from a gunship to a freighter and am now well-equipped to strip-mine an asteroid field, but I suspect that I should at least give the regular game a try, just to see if its massive map is justified by the amount of content available.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Starpoint Gemini 2 - 6/20 hours
I think it's all going to work out fine. Starpoint Gemini 2 is not a great game, but where it fails, it fails within my wheelhouse.
Most of what I've done so far is travel between far-flung locations. Even before I decided my first goal was to clear away as much of the fog-of-war as possible, I spent the bulk of my time uneventfully flying from place to place. Occasionally, I'd get attacked by random NPCs, but the starting ship was more than fast enough to outpace pursuit. I'd drift into a battle, take a couple of shots, and then drift out as if nothing at all had happened.
This is how I like my space games. I'm in an endless void clinging desperately to a few fragile points of light, and that's what I want to feel. The main failing of Starpoint Gemini 2 is that these points of light are not interesting enough to be worth visiting on their own merits. There's 50-odd factions in the game, but visiting any particular space station brings you the same generic station menu. There's no character, no life, to any of the places you visit.
To be fair, part of that may be because I've passed on the game's story mode. I started out innocently enough, attempting the Genesis DLC (that retold the story of the first game in the second's engine), but I quickly lost the thread of the plot. I guess there was this star system that wanted to be free of Earth's control, and so they fought a war, and in the course of this war, the FTL gateway that connected the system to earth got blown up, and this created a temporal anomaly that trapped the main character in some kind of time-free alternate universe until a science ship released him . . . and that's the start of the first game. The second one begins some time later when Earth has returned and started kicking ass. There is a confusingly large amount of back story that seems like it should have been the plot of an actual game, and so I'm not sure where I fit in as a character.
Which is why I've been playing "free roam" mode for the bulk of the last 6 hours. It's Starpoint Gemini 2's open world, without the main story missions. On the one hand, this is a good idea and I can think of a couple of open world games that I'd like to see offer this option. On the other hand, from what I've seen so far, this particular open world doesn't have enough inherent interest to support itself purely on side quests.
I'm torn. I currently have an actionable goal that will likely take me to 20 hours and beyond - visiting every hex on the game's fantastically large map. And yet, even I have to admit that playing the story missions is probably a better use of my time.
Maybe if the story missions were better paced. As it is, I spent a lot of time ineffectually flailing about in a chaotic space battle, and a lot more time flying to the next mission's start point after the battle was complete. So it doesn't exactly feel like I'm trading in a life of tedious grinding for the chance to be a swashbuckling space hero.
. . . And the choice is made. At least for the near term, pointless space cartography is the way I'm going to go. Maybe at some point I'll stop inside a station and take the time to read the news bulletins, and that will make me fall so in love with this universe that I decide I want to help decide the fate of the sector. But more likely is that I finally do enough random side missions to save up for a frigate and then it will be all mining all the time.
Most of what I've done so far is travel between far-flung locations. Even before I decided my first goal was to clear away as much of the fog-of-war as possible, I spent the bulk of my time uneventfully flying from place to place. Occasionally, I'd get attacked by random NPCs, but the starting ship was more than fast enough to outpace pursuit. I'd drift into a battle, take a couple of shots, and then drift out as if nothing at all had happened.
This is how I like my space games. I'm in an endless void clinging desperately to a few fragile points of light, and that's what I want to feel. The main failing of Starpoint Gemini 2 is that these points of light are not interesting enough to be worth visiting on their own merits. There's 50-odd factions in the game, but visiting any particular space station brings you the same generic station menu. There's no character, no life, to any of the places you visit.
To be fair, part of that may be because I've passed on the game's story mode. I started out innocently enough, attempting the Genesis DLC (that retold the story of the first game in the second's engine), but I quickly lost the thread of the plot. I guess there was this star system that wanted to be free of Earth's control, and so they fought a war, and in the course of this war, the FTL gateway that connected the system to earth got blown up, and this created a temporal anomaly that trapped the main character in some kind of time-free alternate universe until a science ship released him . . . and that's the start of the first game. The second one begins some time later when Earth has returned and started kicking ass. There is a confusingly large amount of back story that seems like it should have been the plot of an actual game, and so I'm not sure where I fit in as a character.
Which is why I've been playing "free roam" mode for the bulk of the last 6 hours. It's Starpoint Gemini 2's open world, without the main story missions. On the one hand, this is a good idea and I can think of a couple of open world games that I'd like to see offer this option. On the other hand, from what I've seen so far, this particular open world doesn't have enough inherent interest to support itself purely on side quests.
I'm torn. I currently have an actionable goal that will likely take me to 20 hours and beyond - visiting every hex on the game's fantastically large map. And yet, even I have to admit that playing the story missions is probably a better use of my time.
Maybe if the story missions were better paced. As it is, I spent a lot of time ineffectually flailing about in a chaotic space battle, and a lot more time flying to the next mission's start point after the battle was complete. So it doesn't exactly feel like I'm trading in a life of tedious grinding for the chance to be a swashbuckling space hero.
. . . And the choice is made. At least for the near term, pointless space cartography is the way I'm going to go. Maybe at some point I'll stop inside a station and take the time to read the news bulletins, and that will make me fall so in love with this universe that I decide I want to help decide the fate of the sector. But more likely is that I finally do enough random side missions to save up for a frigate and then it will be all mining all the time.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Starpoint Gemini 2 - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Captain your own space ship and roam the galaxy in 3D in this tactical space simulator with tons of RPG depth ! Space has never looked so inviting - but images can betray...
It has been two years since the end of the second Gemini war, the situation in the wartorn system is further from resolution than ever.
The collection of freedom fighters named Gemini League is now reduced to a small group, with no power or influence, after losing their leaders. The Empire meanwhile, has used the re-opened Starpoint to occupy the once renegade Gemini sector - and beyond.
A multitude of Imperial warship fleets and mammoth motherships have crushed every trace of opposition. The situation was looking bleak, when they suddenly halted their armada and re-shifted their focus on fortifying Starpoint with staggering numbers. Rumours soon spread that they were afraid of something coming after them through the T-gate, from what was supposed to be the core of the Empire. What are they running from that makes even the mighty Empire tremble?
Starpoint Gemini 2 will take players on a breath taking journey, with dark secrets and unimaginable twists that will finally unveil the incredible truth...
Previous Playtime
1 minute
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Well, it was free.
Okay, there's a little more to it than that. This was after I'd reached a point where a game being free was no longer enough of an inducement in and of itself, so the actual content of the game factored into my decision. And a colorful space adventure game can rarely fail to entice me, even if it does get middling reviews.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I don't remember where that 1 minute comes from. I think I must have clicked on the "play" button accidentally. That notwithstanding, it's been awhile since I've been so completely neutral about a game. I really do have no strong feelings one way or the other about playing this.
The upside - I like flying through space, and there was some mention of trading, so if I could just ferry goods from one location to another for the entire 20 hours, I'd be pretty happy.
The downside - maybe it will be one of those exciting space games where you're constantly getting into white-knuckle ship battles and I'd be sad if my ship got blown up.
I figure it'll work out regardless. Even if I wind up losing a lot of space battles, so long as it's easy to reload and jump back in I'll be fine. The only real danger here is the one I take with every obscure series I'd never heard of before - that it might be a poorly made example of whatever it was trying to be. But that 70% metacritic rating suggests it's at least competent.
Captain your own space ship and roam the galaxy in 3D in this tactical space simulator with tons of RPG depth ! Space has never looked so inviting - but images can betray...
It has been two years since the end of the second Gemini war, the situation in the wartorn system is further from resolution than ever.
The collection of freedom fighters named Gemini League is now reduced to a small group, with no power or influence, after losing their leaders. The Empire meanwhile, has used the re-opened Starpoint to occupy the once renegade Gemini sector - and beyond.
A multitude of Imperial warship fleets and mammoth motherships have crushed every trace of opposition. The situation was looking bleak, when they suddenly halted their armada and re-shifted their focus on fortifying Starpoint with staggering numbers. Rumours soon spread that they were afraid of something coming after them through the T-gate, from what was supposed to be the core of the Empire. What are they running from that makes even the mighty Empire tremble?
Starpoint Gemini 2 will take players on a breath taking journey, with dark secrets and unimaginable twists that will finally unveil the incredible truth...
Previous Playtime
1 minute
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Well, it was free.
Okay, there's a little more to it than that. This was after I'd reached a point where a game being free was no longer enough of an inducement in and of itself, so the actual content of the game factored into my decision. And a colorful space adventure game can rarely fail to entice me, even if it does get middling reviews.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I don't remember where that 1 minute comes from. I think I must have clicked on the "play" button accidentally. That notwithstanding, it's been awhile since I've been so completely neutral about a game. I really do have no strong feelings one way or the other about playing this.
The upside - I like flying through space, and there was some mention of trading, so if I could just ferry goods from one location to another for the entire 20 hours, I'd be pretty happy.
The downside - maybe it will be one of those exciting space games where you're constantly getting into white-knuckle ship battles and I'd be sad if my ship got blown up.
I figure it'll work out regardless. Even if I wind up losing a lot of space battles, so long as it's easy to reload and jump back in I'll be fine. The only real danger here is the one I take with every obscure series I'd never heard of before - that it might be a poorly made example of whatever it was trying to be. But that 70% metacritic rating suggests it's at least competent.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Age of Wonders III - 20/20 hours
That turned out to be not that bad after all. I never went back to playing the game "correctly," but the parts of it I did experience, I enjoyed. Summoning weird fantasy monsters and then using them to win simple turn-based battles was pretty decent. If I were to play this game for a longer time, I could definitely see myself becoming more confident, perhaps even getting into some actual wars with an NPC army and attempting to conquer them. Unbelievable, I know, but it could happen.
The big lesson I learned from playing Age of Wonders III is that I should not buy bundles of older games just to complete a series. If this had been the only Age of Wonders game I'd played, this would probably be a very different post. I'd probably be saying something like "the remarkable diversity of units, spells, and equipment make exploration a satisfying game in its own right, and if Age of Wonders III happens to be a little too military-focused for my taste, it was nice as a refreshing change of pace. And who knows, maybe I'll occasionally be in the mood for some fantasy-themed conquest that's a little more forgiving than Might and Magic: Heroes VI."
But I'm not saying that now, because my entire approach to the game was tainted by emotional responses shaped by the previous games in the series. I started this suspicious and that suspicion guided which game modes I would try and my strategic approach once I got going. To be completely honest, I kind of enjoyed the campaign levels I played. I stopped only because I was worried about running into the sort of overwhelming opposition that characterized Age of Wonders II for me.
But what sense does it make to fear something that only exists as an inference based on incomplete information? I was assuming that Age of Wonders III would be like its predecessors, but the flaws of the earlier games were apparent much earlier than 5 hours. I was taking the fact that I hadn't encountered them as evidence they were hidden especially well. And that sort of thinking leads to self-destructive paranoia.
I only ever engaged with a shadow of the full game. I liked what I saw, but I still can't shake the fear that I would be unmade by the unfiltered light of the true thing. I figure someday I'll come back and test myself against it, just to satisfy my curiosity. There's also the nagging thought I should buy the expansion packs so I can get halflings, frostlings, and tigrans, which were conspicuously absent as I was starting random map after random map in an effort to see all the unique units. Though, why would I buy DLC for a game I've only got a perfunctory interest in ever playing again?
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I may just come back to Age of Wonders III for no reason other than to have an excuse to buy the DLC and have a "complete" game. It makes no sense and is actively counterproductive, but that's the way my brain works sometimes.
Maybe I haven't learned as much as I thought.
The big lesson I learned from playing Age of Wonders III is that I should not buy bundles of older games just to complete a series. If this had been the only Age of Wonders game I'd played, this would probably be a very different post. I'd probably be saying something like "the remarkable diversity of units, spells, and equipment make exploration a satisfying game in its own right, and if Age of Wonders III happens to be a little too military-focused for my taste, it was nice as a refreshing change of pace. And who knows, maybe I'll occasionally be in the mood for some fantasy-themed conquest that's a little more forgiving than Might and Magic: Heroes VI."
But I'm not saying that now, because my entire approach to the game was tainted by emotional responses shaped by the previous games in the series. I started this suspicious and that suspicion guided which game modes I would try and my strategic approach once I got going. To be completely honest, I kind of enjoyed the campaign levels I played. I stopped only because I was worried about running into the sort of overwhelming opposition that characterized Age of Wonders II for me.
But what sense does it make to fear something that only exists as an inference based on incomplete information? I was assuming that Age of Wonders III would be like its predecessors, but the flaws of the earlier games were apparent much earlier than 5 hours. I was taking the fact that I hadn't encountered them as evidence they were hidden especially well. And that sort of thinking leads to self-destructive paranoia.
I only ever engaged with a shadow of the full game. I liked what I saw, but I still can't shake the fear that I would be unmade by the unfiltered light of the true thing. I figure someday I'll come back and test myself against it, just to satisfy my curiosity. There's also the nagging thought I should buy the expansion packs so I can get halflings, frostlings, and tigrans, which were conspicuously absent as I was starting random map after random map in an effort to see all the unique units. Though, why would I buy DLC for a game I've only got a perfunctory interest in ever playing again?
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I may just come back to Age of Wonders III for no reason other than to have an excuse to buy the DLC and have a "complete" game. It makes no sense and is actively counterproductive, but that's the way my brain works sometimes.
Maybe I haven't learned as much as I thought.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Age of Wonders III - 11/20 hours
Once more, I pass my time with an Age of Wonders game by playing it "wrong." Less wrong than I've done in the past, in my defense, but still an ass-backwards way to play the game.
I set up a random map of the largest possible size, and then I set the number of players to 2. It's been six hours on the same game and I haven't even seen my opponent yet. It's kind of nerve wracking, because I can only assume that the AI has been expanding far more ambitiously and energetically than I have, but I won't know for sure until I make contact.
It probably won't come down to a final confrontation, though. I've had enough time to build all the possible buildings in a city, unlock all the possible units available to my race and class, and research all the spells available to my initial character setup. There's no other goal I went into the game with. Thus, playing it out to the end would be a waste of time that could be better spent seeing the cool stuff associated with the five other races and five other classes.
I'll confess, it's a dull, pointless way to play the game, but that's what I like about it. More map-filling, less thrilling fantasy-themed battle for martial supremacy. I've enjoyed the tactical battles against the "independent" monsters, so it hasn't entirely been pacifistic thumb-twiddling. However, seeing as how these barbarian-equivalents don't have a coordinated strategy and thus haven't posed a serious threat to my holdings, it has been a relatively stress-free experience so far.
If I start over with a new race and class, I should probably drop the size of the map down to something a bit more reasonable (either that or fill it up with AI opponents), though "should" is a long way from "will." I like tromping through the wilderness, leveling up my heroes and seeing all the different spells and units in action. Why should I stop enjoying myself just because it makes a mockery of what Age of Wonders III is supposed to be about?
I set up a random map of the largest possible size, and then I set the number of players to 2. It's been six hours on the same game and I haven't even seen my opponent yet. It's kind of nerve wracking, because I can only assume that the AI has been expanding far more ambitiously and energetically than I have, but I won't know for sure until I make contact.
It probably won't come down to a final confrontation, though. I've had enough time to build all the possible buildings in a city, unlock all the possible units available to my race and class, and research all the spells available to my initial character setup. There's no other goal I went into the game with. Thus, playing it out to the end would be a waste of time that could be better spent seeing the cool stuff associated with the five other races and five other classes.
I'll confess, it's a dull, pointless way to play the game, but that's what I like about it. More map-filling, less thrilling fantasy-themed battle for martial supremacy. I've enjoyed the tactical battles against the "independent" monsters, so it hasn't entirely been pacifistic thumb-twiddling. However, seeing as how these barbarian-equivalents don't have a coordinated strategy and thus haven't posed a serious threat to my holdings, it has been a relatively stress-free experience so far.
If I start over with a new race and class, I should probably drop the size of the map down to something a bit more reasonable (either that or fill it up with AI opponents), though "should" is a long way from "will." I like tromping through the wilderness, leveling up my heroes and seeing all the different spells and units in action. Why should I stop enjoying myself just because it makes a mockery of what Age of Wonders III is supposed to be about?
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Age of Wonders III - 5/20 hours
Age of Wonders III is peculiar because it has a lot of what I like in a strategy game - building, exploration, rpg style character advancement, but it has yet to hook me. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I am peculiar because I'm playing a game that has at least 75% of what I like, but I'm still keeping it at arm's length.
Something has got to give, and I'm not yet sure which way it will break. I've played three full campaign missions so far (if you count the tutorial) and what can I say, I liked building stuff in my cities. The turn-based tactical combat was fine, though I preferred, when possible, to just auto-resolved the battles. And I liked seeing the different factions' units. The only part I didn't like was the overall goal of conquering everything on the map through military force.
I think I can cope, though. Age of Wonders III has a much friendlier UI than its predecessors, so that's one major problem I don't have to deal with any more. The other - borders being large and indefensible - I've not yet encountered, thanks to the way the scenarios have been laid out. I'll have to start up a random map to see an unbiased version of the game before I make a final determination.
My mood is hopeful, though. It bugs me to know that if this were a Civilization game, I'd be half done by now, but when I regard playing it in the future, I feel . . . narrowly in favor. I've played military games before and gotten into the spirit of them, so it being purely combat focused is not, in itself, a deal-breaker. And I don't have to manually check all of my units to make sure that they've moved, which is nice.
So, you know, I'm willing to entertain the idea that this might not be so bad after all.
Something has got to give, and I'm not yet sure which way it will break. I've played three full campaign missions so far (if you count the tutorial) and what can I say, I liked building stuff in my cities. The turn-based tactical combat was fine, though I preferred, when possible, to just auto-resolved the battles. And I liked seeing the different factions' units. The only part I didn't like was the overall goal of conquering everything on the map through military force.
I think I can cope, though. Age of Wonders III has a much friendlier UI than its predecessors, so that's one major problem I don't have to deal with any more. The other - borders being large and indefensible - I've not yet encountered, thanks to the way the scenarios have been laid out. I'll have to start up a random map to see an unbiased version of the game before I make a final determination.
My mood is hopeful, though. It bugs me to know that if this were a Civilization game, I'd be half done by now, but when I regard playing it in the future, I feel . . . narrowly in favor. I've played military games before and gotten into the spirit of them, so it being purely combat focused is not, in itself, a deal-breaker. And I don't have to manually check all of my units to make sure that they've moved, which is nice.
So, you know, I'm willing to entertain the idea that this might not be so bad after all.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Age of Wonders III - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Age of Wonders III is the long anticipated sequel to the award-winning strategy series. Delivering a unique mix of Empire Building, Role Playing and Warfare, Age of Wonders III offers the ultimate in turn-based fantasy strategy for veterans of the series and new players alike!
Create an Empire in your own Image
Explore and Exploit a Living Fantasy World
Fight In-depth Tactical Battles
Master Age of Wonders III’s many Modes!
51 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
This is a game I bought because I was under a complete misapprehension about what sort of game it was. I thought it was a fantasy 4X, like Fallen Enchantress. It was well reviewed and the screenshots looked pretty cool. To be fair to Age of Wonders III, though, it's not as if I was deceived. I just didn't pay enough attention. Back then, I had a lot of disposable income and I went shopping whenever I felt down emotionally (a habit I'm still trying to break). Seeing a newish strategy game on deep discount just short-circuited my judgement.
Expectations and Prior Experience
So far, I have not enjoyed the Age of Wonders series. If the pattern holds, I will not enjoy this one either. However, I have reason to be hopeful, or, at least, cautiously resigned. The main thing I disliked about the earlier games in the series was their terrible UI. It was too easy to move units by accident, and there was no automatic cycling between units without orders. It so distressed me that I played the Age of Wonders III tutorial just to confirm that it had been updated with modern quality-of-life features. I am heartened by the fact that it seemed acceptable.
Of course, the other thing I disliked about the Age of Wonders series - its primary focus on military conquest and long, drawn out wars of attrition - is by all accounts still intact in this installment. So it's likely that I won't be happy, but it's all right. I've got my sights set low here. I'll be content so long as the game is tolerable.
Age of Wonders III is the long anticipated sequel to the award-winning strategy series. Delivering a unique mix of Empire Building, Role Playing and Warfare, Age of Wonders III offers the ultimate in turn-based fantasy strategy for veterans of the series and new players alike!
Create an Empire in your own Image
- Rule as one of 6 RPG style leader classes: Sorcerer, Theocrat, Rogue, Warlord, Archdruid, or the tech-focused Dreadnought.
- Research powerful skills unique to your class to develop your empire and arsenal.
- Choose your allies from among the six main races - Humans, High Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins and Draconians - and fantastical monster dwellings.
Explore and Exploit a Living Fantasy World
- Explore a rich fantasy world that is more detailed and alive than ever with over 50 location types to raid for treasure.
- Expand your domain by building new settlements, forge pacts with monstrous allies and capture valuable resources.
- Wield earth shattering magic and terra-form the lands for your needs.
Fight In-depth Tactical Battles
- Recruit legendary heroes, equip them with magical weapons, and let them lead your armies into battle.
- Crush your enemies using the detailed 3D turn-based Tactical Combat System.
- Become a master tactician. Crush city defenses. Learn to use flanking and master your army’s hundreds of abilities.
Master Age of Wonders III’s many Modes!
- Immerse yourself in a rich single player story campaign, playable from two sides of an epic conflict.
- Create endless scenarios using the random map generator.
- Compete in multiplayer wars with up to 8 players online.
51 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
This is a game I bought because I was under a complete misapprehension about what sort of game it was. I thought it was a fantasy 4X, like Fallen Enchantress. It was well reviewed and the screenshots looked pretty cool. To be fair to Age of Wonders III, though, it's not as if I was deceived. I just didn't pay enough attention. Back then, I had a lot of disposable income and I went shopping whenever I felt down emotionally (a habit I'm still trying to break). Seeing a newish strategy game on deep discount just short-circuited my judgement.
Expectations and Prior Experience
So far, I have not enjoyed the Age of Wonders series. If the pattern holds, I will not enjoy this one either. However, I have reason to be hopeful, or, at least, cautiously resigned. The main thing I disliked about the earlier games in the series was their terrible UI. It was too easy to move units by accident, and there was no automatic cycling between units without orders. It so distressed me that I played the Age of Wonders III tutorial just to confirm that it had been updated with modern quality-of-life features. I am heartened by the fact that it seemed acceptable.
Of course, the other thing I disliked about the Age of Wonders series - its primary focus on military conquest and long, drawn out wars of attrition - is by all accounts still intact in this installment. So it's likely that I won't be happy, but it's all right. I've got my sights set low here. I'll be content so long as the game is tolerable.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - 20/20 hours
So . . . the tricky thing about playing a game over and over again to reach an arbitrary time limit is that it gives you lots of practice. My third run through Trine 3, I finished in about three and a half hours. My fourth time was two and a half hours. Even after playing a half dozen mod levels, I still had a little more than an hour to spare. Yikes.
Overall, Trine 3 was a good game to play once, a burdensome game to play twice, a decent game to play three or four times, and a frustrating game to play five times or more. Which is to say, it doesn't have much replay value. Its secrets are pretty obvious and while the final boss was a disheartening difficulty spike, once you figure it out it becomes almost rote. On the other hand, there was a certain pleasure in increasing my skills and retreading the levels in an attempt to finish faster.
Trine 3 wasn't an entirely successful attempt to tweak the Trine formula. It had its moments, but it was undeniably sloppier than the previous games, and removing the experience system didn't do it any favors. But it still has the characteristic Trine charm. I liked hanging out with the heroes and even five times in, the graphical eye candy still had the power to occasionally take my breath away.
I will almost certainly never play again, but there are worse games to have to play four and half times in a row.
Overall, Trine 3 was a good game to play once, a burdensome game to play twice, a decent game to play three or four times, and a frustrating game to play five times or more. Which is to say, it doesn't have much replay value. Its secrets are pretty obvious and while the final boss was a disheartening difficulty spike, once you figure it out it becomes almost rote. On the other hand, there was a certain pleasure in increasing my skills and retreading the levels in an attempt to finish faster.
Trine 3 wasn't an entirely successful attempt to tweak the Trine formula. It had its moments, but it was undeniably sloppier than the previous games, and removing the experience system didn't do it any favors. But it still has the characteristic Trine charm. I liked hanging out with the heroes and even five times in, the graphical eye candy still had the power to occasionally take my breath away.
I will almost certainly never play again, but there are worse games to have to play four and half times in a row.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - 11/20 hours
Oh no. My second playthrough took slightly less than 5 hours. This is not good. It can only mean that I have an entire third playthrough left to go, and also the better part of a fourth. I wouldn't call it a disaster, because Trine 3 is tolerable enough that I can basically play it on autopilot, but I'm still not happy. I yearn for new experiences, new vistas to explore. Instead, I've got to retread this game more times than is humanly reasonable.
I've got no new insights to share with you, though. Trine 3 was a shallow game to start with, and a repeat performance has revealed no hidden depth. I probably could have played it four times, easily, spread out over the course of a year, as a cool-down between more stressful games, but I've decided to do the blog linearly (a decision, I'm realizing, with no real purpose except to make browsing the archives easier).
There is a glimmer of hope, though. Trine 3 allows for mods. There are, potentially, dozens of fan-created levels for me to try out. The only question is if they are more like Shadowrun Returns' massive story missions or Spore's brief and pointless Galactic adventures. It may be that I can get through all the extra adventures and still have enough time for a third playthrough.
That's just a risk I'll have to take, though. Trine 3 is a puzzle game, and nothing hurts a puzzle game more than lack of novelty.
My mood right now is resigned but hopeful. I'm confident that the hours will pass with little trouble, and that the mods will be, at worst, a complete waste of time (which, in this context, is a good thing).
I've got no new insights to share with you, though. Trine 3 was a shallow game to start with, and a repeat performance has revealed no hidden depth. I probably could have played it four times, easily, spread out over the course of a year, as a cool-down between more stressful games, but I've decided to do the blog linearly (a decision, I'm realizing, with no real purpose except to make browsing the archives easier).
There is a glimmer of hope, though. Trine 3 allows for mods. There are, potentially, dozens of fan-created levels for me to try out. The only question is if they are more like Shadowrun Returns' massive story missions or Spore's brief and pointless Galactic adventures. It may be that I can get through all the extra adventures and still have enough time for a third playthrough.
That's just a risk I'll have to take, though. Trine 3 is a puzzle game, and nothing hurts a puzzle game more than lack of novelty.
My mood right now is resigned but hopeful. I'm confident that the hours will pass with little trouble, and that the mods will be, at worst, a complete waste of time (which, in this context, is a good thing).
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - 6.5/20 hours
It's times like this that I most regret my commitment to a 20 hour deadline. You'd think it would be on those long nights when I'm stuck with a bad game and I have to summon my willpower to even look at it. But those moments are somewhat heroic. I may curse my ridiculous life goals and rue my own stubbornness, but I can't help thinking, "I set myself a challenge, and this is what that means."
No, the worst part of playing every game for exactly 20 hours is when I finish a decent game early. That's when I really start to question myself. Because to finish a game entirely is an appropriate and proper end to one's time with it. Especially if it's like Trine 3 and it only takes six and a half hours to reach 100% completion, including all of the Achievements. So what exactly am I doing, playing it all the way through a second (and, as seems likely, third) time?
Because it's not a bad game, there's none of this macho "this is an ordeal I must endure" going on. All I'm really doing is marking time. Reaching an arbitrary point on the clock for no reason other than to maintain my consistency. And while that is enough, and I expect my next couple of runs through the game will be tolerable, it just starts to feel silly.
Ah well. Trine 3 never really presents you with the sort of sadistically dangerous traps that pepper Trine 2's later levels. There's no acid-spewing pipes or lava-filled foundry to make your way past. The final (and thus, presumably, most difficult) level is a lovely redwood forest that is perhaps a bit more vertical than some of the others, but nonetheless pretty easy to navigate.
The only truly difficult part of the game is the final boss. That's where my friend and I got stymied on co-op. It is a significant and distressing spike in the overall difficulty of the game. Most levels, the deadliest thing you have to face is falling down a pit and then respawning just a little ways away. The boss summons monsters, creates deadly rings of poison, and hurls flaming boulders that you have to reflect back in order to deal damage. It is a chaotic and stressful fight after seven levels of casual platforming.
That's why I gave up in multiplayer. We tried it two or three times and I got the impression that it would be one of those things where the only way to beat it would be to get really intense and unfun about it, and I don't want to turn my hanging out time into a hyper competitive hothouse.
That being said, I think Trine 3, like the other Trine games, is noticeably easier in single-player mode. I beat the final boss on my first try, and got 100% completion roughly 20 minutes sooner than my friend and I achieved 90% completion. I'm not sure why this should be the case. Normally, you'd think that more people would make a task easier. And while some co-op games solve this by scaling up the difficulty, Trine 3 doesn't appear to do so,
I think what happens is that with multiple players, you can't half-ass your way around obstacles. Your solutions have to be stable enough to stand up to multiple uses. Also, talking your way through the problem-solving process eats up a certain amount of time. Finally, the way respawning works may be slightly more time-efficient in single player. I also can't discount the time I saved by relying on knowledge gleaned from my previous playthrough, though that was seven months ago and I didn't often notice it helping me.
Regardless, I didn't miss out on much not finishing the multiplayer. Trine 3 has the temerity to end on a cliffhanger, and I can only imagine it's because they ran out of time and/or money, because the plot isn't nearly strong enough to merit it. Basically, you learn the origin of the Trine - a pair of heroic sisters voluntarily entered these soul-capturing artifacts in order to trap an evil, immortal sorcerer in a third until such time as heroes might come along and find the sorcerer's enchanted heart and thereby slay him permanently. The Trine is one of the three artifacts, inhabited by the soul of one of the sisters. Over the course of the game, the Trine breaks and the evil sorcerer uses this opportunity to break out of his own artifact prison. The heroes have to reassemble the Trine to gain enough power to stop the villain. This involves platforming an collecting little doodads called "Trinangles." In the end, it turns out that you get about 2/3rds of the way through this process, including the large, unnumbered piece you get by defeating the final boss, and then the sorcerer breaks the third artifact, letting out the Trine spirit's sister, who appears not to be friendly, and then . . . we'll have to wait for the sequel to find out.
The practical upshot of all this is that I have literally no reason to keep playing this game. Everything I could possibly have wanted from it, I've already gotten. Yet I'm going to play it two more times, because I am a fundamentally ridiculous person.
Sigh.
No, the worst part of playing every game for exactly 20 hours is when I finish a decent game early. That's when I really start to question myself. Because to finish a game entirely is an appropriate and proper end to one's time with it. Especially if it's like Trine 3 and it only takes six and a half hours to reach 100% completion, including all of the Achievements. So what exactly am I doing, playing it all the way through a second (and, as seems likely, third) time?
Because it's not a bad game, there's none of this macho "this is an ordeal I must endure" going on. All I'm really doing is marking time. Reaching an arbitrary point on the clock for no reason other than to maintain my consistency. And while that is enough, and I expect my next couple of runs through the game will be tolerable, it just starts to feel silly.
Ah well. Trine 3 never really presents you with the sort of sadistically dangerous traps that pepper Trine 2's later levels. There's no acid-spewing pipes or lava-filled foundry to make your way past. The final (and thus, presumably, most difficult) level is a lovely redwood forest that is perhaps a bit more vertical than some of the others, but nonetheless pretty easy to navigate.
The only truly difficult part of the game is the final boss. That's where my friend and I got stymied on co-op. It is a significant and distressing spike in the overall difficulty of the game. Most levels, the deadliest thing you have to face is falling down a pit and then respawning just a little ways away. The boss summons monsters, creates deadly rings of poison, and hurls flaming boulders that you have to reflect back in order to deal damage. It is a chaotic and stressful fight after seven levels of casual platforming.
That's why I gave up in multiplayer. We tried it two or three times and I got the impression that it would be one of those things where the only way to beat it would be to get really intense and unfun about it, and I don't want to turn my hanging out time into a hyper competitive hothouse.
That being said, I think Trine 3, like the other Trine games, is noticeably easier in single-player mode. I beat the final boss on my first try, and got 100% completion roughly 20 minutes sooner than my friend and I achieved 90% completion. I'm not sure why this should be the case. Normally, you'd think that more people would make a task easier. And while some co-op games solve this by scaling up the difficulty, Trine 3 doesn't appear to do so,
I think what happens is that with multiple players, you can't half-ass your way around obstacles. Your solutions have to be stable enough to stand up to multiple uses. Also, talking your way through the problem-solving process eats up a certain amount of time. Finally, the way respawning works may be slightly more time-efficient in single player. I also can't discount the time I saved by relying on knowledge gleaned from my previous playthrough, though that was seven months ago and I didn't often notice it helping me.
Regardless, I didn't miss out on much not finishing the multiplayer. Trine 3 has the temerity to end on a cliffhanger, and I can only imagine it's because they ran out of time and/or money, because the plot isn't nearly strong enough to merit it. Basically, you learn the origin of the Trine - a pair of heroic sisters voluntarily entered these soul-capturing artifacts in order to trap an evil, immortal sorcerer in a third until such time as heroes might come along and find the sorcerer's enchanted heart and thereby slay him permanently. The Trine is one of the three artifacts, inhabited by the soul of one of the sisters. Over the course of the game, the Trine breaks and the evil sorcerer uses this opportunity to break out of his own artifact prison. The heroes have to reassemble the Trine to gain enough power to stop the villain. This involves platforming an collecting little doodads called "Trinangles." In the end, it turns out that you get about 2/3rds of the way through this process, including the large, unnumbered piece you get by defeating the final boss, and then the sorcerer breaks the third artifact, letting out the Trine spirit's sister, who appears not to be friendly, and then . . . we'll have to wait for the sequel to find out.
The practical upshot of all this is that I have literally no reason to keep playing this game. Everything I could possibly have wanted from it, I've already gotten. Yet I'm going to play it two more times, because I am a fundamentally ridiculous person.
Sigh.
Monday, March 12, 2018
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - 2/20 hours
Trine 3 is, on balance, a delightful little game. It's easily as gorgeous as either of its predecessors, and the characterization of the three heroes is stronger than it's ever been. The voice acting is top notch and the cast has an easy chemistry that makes it believable that they've been on multiple adventures together (I don't know if they recorded their lines together, but if not, then it's impressive how natural their conversations sound).
The game's main flaw is small, but hard to ignore - going to 3D adds nothing to the series' gameplay, and in fact harms Trine 3 much more than it helps. The addition of a third dimension allows for some new puzzle mechanics - so far; rotating things horizontally (instead of just vertically) and tying Zoya's ropes around poles - but the price for this is that the 3D controls make everything you do just a bit sloppier. This is especially true for maneuvering the wizard's boxes and swinging on the thief's grappling hook. Having to deal with a third axis of movement makes those powers significantly harder to use.
Nonetheless, imprecise controls would not, in themselves, be sufficient to condemn the move to 3D, were it not for the fact that Trine 3's 3D is poorly implemented. Done well, 3D can give you a real sense of immersion and scale. The Trine series has always had beautifully crafted levels, and a 3D Trine that gave you the experience of being surrounded by that beauty, of existing within it, would be worth a certain degree of awkwardness in the controls. Unfortunately, Trine 3 presents its 3D from a fixed and distant camera angle, and thus it strongly resembles its side-scrolling predecessors, only with more difficult jumps and the embarrassing possibility of falling off the front and back of the screen.
Don't get me wrong, Trine 3 is still the loveliest entry of a characteristically lovely series, and the 3D contributes to that, but it's probably not worth it.
This is just griping, though. The core Trine gameplay remains solid, and it's still a charming fairy tale with a pinch of modern sensibilities (plus, we learn that Pontius is a proto-marxist), so I expect my first runthrough will be relatively painless. I just hate to see a good game waste effort on a self-destructive gimmick.
The game's main flaw is small, but hard to ignore - going to 3D adds nothing to the series' gameplay, and in fact harms Trine 3 much more than it helps. The addition of a third dimension allows for some new puzzle mechanics - so far; rotating things horizontally (instead of just vertically) and tying Zoya's ropes around poles - but the price for this is that the 3D controls make everything you do just a bit sloppier. This is especially true for maneuvering the wizard's boxes and swinging on the thief's grappling hook. Having to deal with a third axis of movement makes those powers significantly harder to use.
Nonetheless, imprecise controls would not, in themselves, be sufficient to condemn the move to 3D, were it not for the fact that Trine 3's 3D is poorly implemented. Done well, 3D can give you a real sense of immersion and scale. The Trine series has always had beautifully crafted levels, and a 3D Trine that gave you the experience of being surrounded by that beauty, of existing within it, would be worth a certain degree of awkwardness in the controls. Unfortunately, Trine 3 presents its 3D from a fixed and distant camera angle, and thus it strongly resembles its side-scrolling predecessors, only with more difficult jumps and the embarrassing possibility of falling off the front and back of the screen.
Don't get me wrong, Trine 3 is still the loveliest entry of a characteristically lovely series, and the 3D contributes to that, but it's probably not worth it.
This is just griping, though. The core Trine gameplay remains solid, and it's still a charming fairy tale with a pinch of modern sensibilities (plus, we learn that Pontius is a proto-marxist), so I expect my first runthrough will be relatively painless. I just hate to see a good game waste effort on a self-destructive gimmick.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Experience a fairytale world of breathtaking sceneries and face a myriad of physics-based puzzles, wonderful contraptions, dangerous foes and enchanting creatures.
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power is a platforming game of action, puzzles and adventure, and the sequel to the award winning Trine and Trine 2. Reunite with the familiar heroes - Pontius the Knight, Amadeus the Wizard and Zoya the Thief in an all-new adventure, now for the first time in full 3D!
Playable in single-player or in co-up with up to three players, both locally or online.
Previous Playtime
6.8 hours
Expectations and Prior Experience
My friend Daniel and I played almost the entire game in co-op. We stopped at the very last level because the final boss was too frustrating to be much fun, but until then it was a charming and creative 3D puzzle platformer.
If I'm being completely honest, though, after playing Trine 2 and, subsequently, Trine, I have to say that Trine 3 is the weakest entry in the series. The move to 3D was handled reasonably well, but it resulted in less tightly-constructed puzzles and an overall shallower experience (no pun intended). It's still decent enough that I have no special fear of having to play it 3+ times in a row, but I know already that it's not going to be a high point for me.
So let's just get it out of the way quickly so I can move on to even more unforgivingly co-operative games to play by myself.
Experience a fairytale world of breathtaking sceneries and face a myriad of physics-based puzzles, wonderful contraptions, dangerous foes and enchanting creatures.
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power is a platforming game of action, puzzles and adventure, and the sequel to the award winning Trine and Trine 2. Reunite with the familiar heroes - Pontius the Knight, Amadeus the Wizard and Zoya the Thief in an all-new adventure, now for the first time in full 3D!
Playable in single-player or in co-up with up to three players, both locally or online.
Previous Playtime
6.8 hours
Expectations and Prior Experience
My friend Daniel and I played almost the entire game in co-op. We stopped at the very last level because the final boss was too frustrating to be much fun, but until then it was a charming and creative 3D puzzle platformer.
If I'm being completely honest, though, after playing Trine 2 and, subsequently, Trine, I have to say that Trine 3 is the weakest entry in the series. The move to 3D was handled reasonably well, but it resulted in less tightly-constructed puzzles and an overall shallower experience (no pun intended). It's still decent enough that I have no special fear of having to play it 3+ times in a row, but I know already that it's not going to be a high point for me.
So let's just get it out of the way quickly so I can move on to even more unforgivingly co-operative games to play by myself.
Stronghold 3 - 20/20 hours
Sometimes people ask me why I do this - why I subject myself to these games I don't particularly like, playing them for longer than is reasonably necessary. I usually answer with something self-deprecating about vanity and living up to the self-created myth of my own endurance.
But that's only part of the story. Over and above a stubborn determination to stick to my goal, it's moments like this that keep me going. Sitting here, looking back at 120 hours of an impulsively purchased game bundle and knowing that I will never have to play any of them again . . . it is . . . immensely satisfying. There were actually tears in my eyes as I hit the delete button to remove Stronghold 3 from my hard drive. The relief was profound. It was like a burden being lifted from shoulders.
The game itself was all right, but probably the least essential of the series. Its only addition to the Stronghold formula was its 3D graphics, and they wound up being less attractive than Stronghold 2 while also imposing a dubious new limitation on the gameplay - the ability to rotate buildings off the rectilinear resulted in sloppier cities and less efficient lines of transit. Maybe that makes the game truer to its medieval setting, but I'd have appreciated a snap-to-grid option, because realism matters less to me than neatness.
But that's not that big a deal. The real problem with Stronghold 3 is that it's not put together very well. I had to quit free build mode when my 400+ population city ground my computer to a halt. There was a noticeable delay between me moving my mouse and the program responding to the input. At times it would freeze entirely. I even had to fire up the task manager and force quit the game. Then when I would try and start over, it would crash immediately, forcing me to reset my computer entirely.
But even that isn't my real issue. My real issue is that I wanted something from the game it couldn't deliver - a more detailed and realistic sim with my little characters going about their imaginary lives and a version of siege warfare that revolved more around stockpiling food and resources than the tactical micromanagement of units. It's probably an unfair opinion, because I'm basically asking the game to be something its not, but that's just the way it is.
Overall, I'd say that if you're interesting in the Stronghold series, it's pretty arbitrary which one you go with, except that Stronghold 3 should probably be your last choice. Whatever it is you like about the series, another entry does better, and the one thing it does do best - being in 3D - isn't much of a selling point.
Although, if you do get the opportunity to play the entire series for 120 hours and then quit, I can highly recommend it.
But that's only part of the story. Over and above a stubborn determination to stick to my goal, it's moments like this that keep me going. Sitting here, looking back at 120 hours of an impulsively purchased game bundle and knowing that I will never have to play any of them again . . . it is . . . immensely satisfying. There were actually tears in my eyes as I hit the delete button to remove Stronghold 3 from my hard drive. The relief was profound. It was like a burden being lifted from shoulders.
The game itself was all right, but probably the least essential of the series. Its only addition to the Stronghold formula was its 3D graphics, and they wound up being less attractive than Stronghold 2 while also imposing a dubious new limitation on the gameplay - the ability to rotate buildings off the rectilinear resulted in sloppier cities and less efficient lines of transit. Maybe that makes the game truer to its medieval setting, but I'd have appreciated a snap-to-grid option, because realism matters less to me than neatness.
But that's not that big a deal. The real problem with Stronghold 3 is that it's not put together very well. I had to quit free build mode when my 400+ population city ground my computer to a halt. There was a noticeable delay between me moving my mouse and the program responding to the input. At times it would freeze entirely. I even had to fire up the task manager and force quit the game. Then when I would try and start over, it would crash immediately, forcing me to reset my computer entirely.
But even that isn't my real issue. My real issue is that I wanted something from the game it couldn't deliver - a more detailed and realistic sim with my little characters going about their imaginary lives and a version of siege warfare that revolved more around stockpiling food and resources than the tactical micromanagement of units. It's probably an unfair opinion, because I'm basically asking the game to be something its not, but that's just the way it is.
Overall, I'd say that if you're interesting in the Stronghold series, it's pretty arbitrary which one you go with, except that Stronghold 3 should probably be your last choice. Whatever it is you like about the series, another entry does better, and the one thing it does do best - being in 3D - isn't much of a selling point.
Although, if you do get the opportunity to play the entire series for 120 hours and then quit, I can highly recommend it.
Friday, March 9, 2018
Stronghold 3 - 5/20 hours
It's come down to this. My final Stronghold game has become a pure battle of wills. Not that the game is particularly bad, but this is the sixth game in the series and it adds basically nothing to the Stronghold formula.
It's actually kind of astonishing how . . . consistent this series has been. There's some tinkering around the edges. Some buildings have slightly different functions. Feasting for the sake of honor has been streamlined. There used to be buildings that could produce one of two different weapons (such as bows and crossbows), depending on how you set it - those have been split into two different buildings. There's one new unit, the ranger, whose tactical role I have not yet discerned. But none of these changes really effect how he game is played. Even Stronghold Legends' hero units were more like window dressing. The only game in the series that feels significantly different than the baseline is Stronghold Crusader Extreme.
The only thing I can think of is that the original Stronghold must have a powerful constituency somewhere and they don't want a great deal of innovative mechanics or dramatic gameplay refinements, but prefer the game just the way it was, only with more sophisticated graphics. Thus it keeps getting conservative sequels. It makes sense that people who like the game might want more of the same, but it's always been my preference for video game sequels to push the original's central idea forward. Five times so far, I've been hoping for a more sophisticated and nuanced medieval town/siege warfare simulator and the series has only fitfully delivered.
On the other hand, they have managed to developed a characteristic Stronghold flavor that remains more or less constant through the games, so you always know what you're getting . . . for better or worse.
It's actually kind of astonishing how . . . consistent this series has been. There's some tinkering around the edges. Some buildings have slightly different functions. Feasting for the sake of honor has been streamlined. There used to be buildings that could produce one of two different weapons (such as bows and crossbows), depending on how you set it - those have been split into two different buildings. There's one new unit, the ranger, whose tactical role I have not yet discerned. But none of these changes really effect how he game is played. Even Stronghold Legends' hero units were more like window dressing. The only game in the series that feels significantly different than the baseline is Stronghold Crusader Extreme.
The only thing I can think of is that the original Stronghold must have a powerful constituency somewhere and they don't want a great deal of innovative mechanics or dramatic gameplay refinements, but prefer the game just the way it was, only with more sophisticated graphics. Thus it keeps getting conservative sequels. It makes sense that people who like the game might want more of the same, but it's always been my preference for video game sequels to push the original's central idea forward. Five times so far, I've been hoping for a more sophisticated and nuanced medieval town/siege warfare simulator and the series has only fitfully delivered.
On the other hand, they have managed to developed a characteristic Stronghold flavor that remains more or less constant through the games, so you always know what you're getting . . . for better or worse.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Trine 2 - 20/20 hours
Most of my discussion of Trine 2 has centered around my cold. So let me just say that the worst of it has passed and I'm now back up to about 95% - and that will be the last of it. It wasn't the sort of game I'd play to distract me from my health problems, but it also did not add excessively to my burden.
I'm actually at a loss for any superlatives to attach to Trine 2. It's definitely the best of the Trine games, with the best balance between length, difficulty, and story, but the series as a whole is . . .
. . .
. . .
. . . Above average in a forgettable way. Like, if I'm honestly ranking the various platformer games I've played, it's better than Hell Yeah! (by quite a significant margin), and it's better than Fez (less dramatically so, but still) and it's better even than Apotheon (though that's a tough call), but it doesn't have disgusting hell rabbits, or twisty 3D perspective puzzles, or art direction that belongs in a museum. It just does everything it's supposed to do and does it well. The controls are almost perfectly functional, enough so that the few errors (sometimes, you will grapple things you didn't mean to, or summon boxes imprecisely) are forgotten after a few seconds. The puzzles are clever and keep you on your toes, even if they never rise to the level of memorable spectacle. The graphics are gorgeously lush, colorful, and detailed, and the only fault I can possibly find with it is that the world it depicts is kind of generic.
All in all, I'm in a weird position. I can unreservedly recommend Trine 2. It was worth the time to play and though I received it as a gift, I would consider it a fair bargain at its full price. However, it is taking up precisely zero real estate in my head. That's probably why it took me longer to finish than Stronghold Crusader Extreme. There just wasn't anything for my imagination to hook onto, either good or bad. It was pleasant, fun in a way most games should strive to be, but if it weren't so good, it would be the definition of "average."
I'm actually at a loss for any superlatives to attach to Trine 2. It's definitely the best of the Trine games, with the best balance between length, difficulty, and story, but the series as a whole is . . .
. . .
. . .
. . . Above average in a forgettable way. Like, if I'm honestly ranking the various platformer games I've played, it's better than Hell Yeah! (by quite a significant margin), and it's better than Fez (less dramatically so, but still) and it's better even than Apotheon (though that's a tough call), but it doesn't have disgusting hell rabbits, or twisty 3D perspective puzzles, or art direction that belongs in a museum. It just does everything it's supposed to do and does it well. The controls are almost perfectly functional, enough so that the few errors (sometimes, you will grapple things you didn't mean to, or summon boxes imprecisely) are forgotten after a few seconds. The puzzles are clever and keep you on your toes, even if they never rise to the level of memorable spectacle. The graphics are gorgeously lush, colorful, and detailed, and the only fault I can possibly find with it is that the world it depicts is kind of generic.
All in all, I'm in a weird position. I can unreservedly recommend Trine 2. It was worth the time to play and though I received it as a gift, I would consider it a fair bargain at its full price. However, it is taking up precisely zero real estate in my head. That's probably why it took me longer to finish than Stronghold Crusader Extreme. There just wasn't anything for my imagination to hook onto, either good or bad. It was pleasant, fun in a way most games should strive to be, but if it weren't so good, it would be the definition of "average."
Friday, March 2, 2018
Trine 2 - 11/20 hours
For much of the last three days, every time I thought about playing Trine 2, I was in physical pain. The facts are unrelated, of course, but it's hard to convince your brain of that. I hope this doesn't retroactively change my opinion of the game, because it's really quite good.
I especially like the way the main story seamlessly transitions into the DLC. When you defeat Rosabel's dragon, it at first appears that the credits will scroll, but a goblin runs onscreen and interrupts, saying that there's more to come. And then you play the DLC levels, a semi-sequel about Amadeus's (the wizard's) wife getting kidnapped by goblins.
That whole plotline is somewhat problematic, because Margaret's characterization relies heavily on the "shrewish housewife" stereotype. It's kind of amusing that her monstrous captors got more than they bargained for, but they didn't do anything interesting enough with the idea to make up for how regressive it was.
I guess plot isn't that important to the Trine series, though. It's presented very in a very minimalist fashion. There's not a lot of worldbuilding, and the characterization is distinct, but shallow, and done mostly through the characters' mid-level quips. It's easy to forget what exactly is going on when you solve puzzles for 40 minutes and then watch a 1 minute cutscene.
I think they're deliberately going for a "fairy tale" aesthetic, which works well with the colorful levels and broadly drawn enemies, but, of course, it puts me at a loss for stuff to write about.
My next move is to go back through the game and try and get 100% completion. It will likely take me longer than I have left, but that's not a problem. The real concern is that there's a significant difficulty spike in the later levels, and I might get stuck having to collect a bunch of xp that requires precision platforming I am still too plague-ridden to tolerate.
Ah well, at least it's not Stronghold.
I especially like the way the main story seamlessly transitions into the DLC. When you defeat Rosabel's dragon, it at first appears that the credits will scroll, but a goblin runs onscreen and interrupts, saying that there's more to come. And then you play the DLC levels, a semi-sequel about Amadeus's (the wizard's) wife getting kidnapped by goblins.
That whole plotline is somewhat problematic, because Margaret's characterization relies heavily on the "shrewish housewife" stereotype. It's kind of amusing that her monstrous captors got more than they bargained for, but they didn't do anything interesting enough with the idea to make up for how regressive it was.
I guess plot isn't that important to the Trine series, though. It's presented very in a very minimalist fashion. There's not a lot of worldbuilding, and the characterization is distinct, but shallow, and done mostly through the characters' mid-level quips. It's easy to forget what exactly is going on when you solve puzzles for 40 minutes and then watch a 1 minute cutscene.
I think they're deliberately going for a "fairy tale" aesthetic, which works well with the colorful levels and broadly drawn enemies, but, of course, it puts me at a loss for stuff to write about.
My next move is to go back through the game and try and get 100% completion. It will likely take me longer than I have left, but that's not a problem. The real concern is that there's a significant difficulty spike in the later levels, and I might get stuck having to collect a bunch of xp that requires precision platforming I am still too plague-ridden to tolerate.
Ah well, at least it's not Stronghold.
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